


Prompt: The Tumblr Fics

by AsbestosMouth



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Also Show Canon, Alternate Universe - 1980s, Alternate Universe - Coffee Shops & Cafés, Alternate Universe - Harry Potter Setting, Alternate Universe - Library, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Book canon that is, Canon Compliant, F/M, Historical Roleplay, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Rugby, Seven Deadly Sins, Shakespeare Quotations, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Tumblr Prompt, alternative universe - fairies
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-09-29
Updated: 2017-09-13
Packaged: 2018-08-18 12:07:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 26
Words: 41,835
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8161550
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AsbestosMouth/pseuds/AsbestosMouth
Summary: A compilation of all my Tumblr prompts and replies that I've been accruing. Mostly hideously fluffy, to be honest, for which I blame everyone else apart from myself. Wide range of pairings, from my lovely followers and nonny mice that have been lovely enough to request something.
First chapter will be a basic list of what the chapters/pairings are, etc., so you can skip the ones that you don't want to read, straight to the ones you do, with a basic description. Pairings to be added as each fic is added.





	1. Chapter List

* * *

 

 **Chapter 1:** _Contents list_

 

 **Chapter 2: _Circle Time -_**  SanSan (Modern Day AU, sickeningly fluffy) _Sansa volunteers to teach circle time to the under fives at her local library. Her favourite pupil, Lyanna, is usually collected by her Nanny. Until the day she is collected by her Dad._

 

 **Chapter 3: _Ticketed -_**  Jojen/Bran (Modern Day AU involving fae)  _The things the Fair Folk don’t understand about the human realm are many,  but the concept of buying a ticket for a train journey never seems to stick in Jojen’s head. Mostly because everything else drives common-sense out, to be perfectly honest._

**Chapter 4: _Pride: In the Name of Love_** \- Willas/Oberyn, mentions of Willas/Oberyn/Ellaria (book canon-ish with some added Shakespeare)  _Is pride in another as sinful as pride in oneself, especially where love is concerned? Oberyn cripples Willas at that tournament, and this ensues. Canon(ish) and fluffy._

 

  **Chapter 5: _Greed:_** _ ** _Perni_ cious Root** \- Stannis/Davos _(canon compliant, either slashy or bromance) _Stannis stalks the battlements of Castle Black, and Davos worries that his King’s obsession and hunger for the Iron Throne will bring their destruction._

 

 **Chapter 6:** _ **Envy: Green-Eyed** -_ Jaime/Brienne (canon compliant) _Jealousy is a green-eyed Lannister, envious of Brienne’s skill, decency, honour, and, above all, her hands. A skirmish against brigands makes Jaime reassess._

 

 **Chapter 7:** _ **Gluttony: Surfeit** -_ Jon/Sam (pre-slash, canon compliant, food obsessed) _Winter is coming, bringing death. Cold. White Walkers. Starvation. Of course Sam dwells upon past feasts, to get him through each minute that pulls him towards death. At least he has Jon’s kindness and vitality to sustain him. Just a little._

 

 **Chapter 8: _Wrath: Enrage the Heart_** _-_ Arya/Podrick (canon compliant)  _No One returns to Winterfell, bearing her true name. The anger of her past threatens to overwhelm, and Arya is unable to control her wrath. Luckily there is a kindly squire there to bring her back from the edge._

 

 **Chapter 9: _Breakfast in Bed_** \- Bronn/Margaery (modern AU fluff) _Margaery doesn’t usually cook, but for once she decides to surprise Bronn with breakfast in bed. She doesn’t usually cook for a very bloody good reason._

 

 **Chapter 10:** _ **In Tents** \-  _ Jaime/Brienne (modern AU English Civil War reenactment fluff)  _Jaime, Brienne, and others are involved in re-enactment. Of course the British weather conspires to ruin everything, and when Jaime’s tent is flooded, he has to bunk with Brienne. In a one-man tent._

 

 **Chapter 11:** _ **Flu** \- _ Stannis/Davos (modern AU fluff) _Stannis has flu. He is convinced that death is near. Davos tried to convince him that he isn’t dying. It is all Brexit’s fault._

 

 **Chapter 12:** _ **Stolen** \- _ Brienne/Tormund (canon compliant **Explicit** ) _Tormund is everything that can be wrong with a man; vile, crude, disgusting. Attractive. Virile. Unlike anyone Brienne has seen before. She pretends she despises him. Tormund goes along with it, because at night-_

 

 **Chapter 13: _Mid-Life Crisis_** \- Beric/Ramsay (modern day AU, future _Try Hard_ universe, Ramsay is his own warning etc. heed warnings but also fluff. Long tag is long.) _Beric is totally zen with being almost fifty, because Beric is totally zen with everything. Ramsay, fast approaching that fortieth birthday that looms ominously, really isn’t pleased with the thought of getting old._

 

 **Chapter 14: _Wed_** \- Jaime/Brienne (post canon fluff)  _During the Long Night, Jaime and Brienne finally admitted their feelings, physically and emotionally, because constant fear of death is an excellent catalyst for these things. Now, on their wedding day, Brienne is having second thoughts. What is a man to do when their wife is being an idiot? Invade her room as she’s wearing her wedding gown and talk some sense into her, that’s what._

 

 **Chapter 15: _Expecto Patronum_** \- Sandor/Sansa (Marauders Era GoT/Harry Potter cross-over) _Sandor needs to be able to cast the Patronus charm to pass his higher level DADA NEWT wizarding exam, but he hasn’t got the requisite happy memory to get the spell to cast *sob*. Sansa wants to be able to properly play quidditch with her siblings in their back garden. So, they might as well help each other, right?_

 

 **Chapter 16: _Rebound_** \- Brynden 'The Blackfish' Tully/Jon Connington (1980s AU, _Try Hard_ Universe) _The year? 1987. The scandal over Lyanna running off with Rhaegar is shaking the world of Westerosi rugby to the core. Jon Connington is understandably heartbroken because Targaryen should have run off with him. This pining is not good for team morale, so coach of Storm’s End rugby team, Barristan Selmy, bribes Brynden Tully to take Jon out somewhere nice to cheer him up._

 

 **Chapter 17: _Hand_** \- Daenerys/Tyrion (canon compliant post S6) _Daenerys makes Tyrion her Hand of the Queen. The position brings with it an entire boatload of paperwork, which really, no sane person could ever enjoy. So, when his Queen decides she wants to chat, that’s perfectly fine with Tyrion. Then she asks if he loves her._

 

 **Chapter 18: _Love Song_** \- Sandor/Sansa (Continuation of [Expecto Patronum](http://asbestosmouth.tumblr.com/post/147417632683/tumblr-fic-expecto-patronum))  _It is 1980 - two years have passed. Sandor, involved with the Order of the Phoenix, is a beater for the Caerphilly Catapults, along with ‘Dangerous’ Dai Llewellyn. When his team mate decides they should go out in Cardiff because Sandor won’t let him play with the trebuchet, they end up in the student union, where Clegane reunites with someone he hasn’t seen for a very long time indeed._

 

 **Chapter 19: _Pride and Prejudice (First Impressions)_** \- Rickon/Shireen (Modern AU, young teenagers) _First impressions can be deceiving, especially when teenagers are involved._

 

 **Chapter 20: _Marked_** \- Stannis/Davos (modern AU, soulmark trope)  _Stannis hates soul marks. Soul marks, after all, are the invention of a perverse and sadistic God, and he thinks them an outmoded and ridiculous concept. This has nothing to do with his divorce or his lack of soulmate, and the fact everyone else is happy and in love apart from him. No. Not at all._

 

 **Chapter 21: _Snow Time_** \- Sandor/Sansa (modern AU, very fluffy)  _The follow-up to Circle Time, which can be found[here](http://asbestosmouth.tumblr.com/post/146717650128/tumblr-fic-circle-time). Lyanna Mormont is Sandor’s five year old daughter. Sandor’s a single dad. Sansa works voluntarily at Winterfell Library, teaching Circle Time to young children. Snow happens._

 

 **Chapter 22: _Checkmate_** \- Brienne/Tormund (modern day Sevenmas/Christmas AU) _Tormund is going to Tarth for Sevenmas Day with Brienne. She’s uptight about it - especially with what he wants to wear._

 

 **Chapter 23:** _ **Coffee and TV** -_ Arya/Gendry (modern day fluff)  _Arya hates working in 'Brewed Awakening.' Not only does she loathe coffee, her bosses, and her co-workers, but hipsters flock to the place no matter how rudely she and the other staff treat them. At least, when the mechanic with the filthy hands comes in, he asks for nothing but a black coffee. Why didn’t anyone tell her the bike shop around the corner employs the hottest man this side of Oberyn Martell?_

 

 **Chapter 24: _Something Stupid_** _-_ Arya/Gendry (modern fluff, _Coffee and TV_ sequel) _Sex, drinking Jack Daniels, and discussing superheroes? It might just indicate that Gendry's a bit in love with Arya, of course._

 

 _ **Chapter 25: Black Dog** \- _ Sandor/Sansa (modern AU angsty bittersweet with added PTSD) _Sansa keeps Sandor grounded when the black dog of war comes to haunt him. In return, he calms her own demons. Together, they are strong._

 

 _ **Chapter 26: WildWolf x StagPrincess** \- _ Rickon/Shireen (modern AU university instant messaging)  _A stranger who loves textspeak asks Shireen if her instant messenger handle - StagPrincess - means she really is royalty. She asks him if his - WildWolf - means he is actually a wolf. It devolves from there._

 

* * *

 


	2. Circle Time

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt by @sarahcakes613: _SanSan. Sansa is a librarian in a public library. I don’t even care what else. FAN WISH FULFILLMENT PLS. (me, coincidentally also a librarian? nonsense.)_

* * *

 

 

_**2.42pm** _

 

“We’re going on a bear hunt,” Sansa sings, her voice soft and clear and pure.

 

“We’re going to catch a big one.”

 

Before her sprawl four children, aged between three and five, their eyes as round as saucers.

 

“What a beautiful day!” And it is. Through the long windows of the library faint autumnal sunlight hits drifting motes, and the reassuring must of books curls in her nose, like a warm blanket, or a mug of cocoa.

 

“We’re not scared.”

 

One of the children, the eldest, a black-haired girl with straight almost angry eyebrows and grey eyes, nods in agreement. She is Sansa’s favourite; a serious child, always neatly dressed even if the clothes are rather worn, well-loved. She knows the words to the stories as she has been coming here weekly for about half a year now. She sometimes mouths along, and her tastes run to tales of animals.  _ Going on a Bear Hunt. Guess How Much I Love You? _

 

_ Always that much _ , she signs, then spreads her small arms out very wide indeed.

 

The others always chatter at storytime, always squeal with excitement, or moan with fear at scary sweet stories in the overlarge books that Sansa uses as a teaching aide, set high above their carpet on an old paint-spattered easel that she dragged from storage. Lyanna says nothing, because she cannot. She watches, intent and fierce, never looking to the book but always at Sansa’s face.

 

“Uh-oh,” she goes on, before Mr. Baratheon indicates from the front desk that story time is over, and it is exactly 2.45pm. When Mr. Seaworth, the kindest of the volunteers, mans the fort then she is allowed to finish the story. “Uh-oh! Mums and Dads are here, so we shall see the bear tomorrow?”

 

The three who are not Lyanna race off to various parents, but the silent girl remains, legs crossed, watching Sansa.

 

“Is Gilly coming to get you today?” She smiles, offers a hand, which is taken. Lyanna’s palm is warm, and slightly grubby, and she bites her nails.

 

A shake of her head. Her hair is cropped functionally short.

 

“Shall I come and wait until your person comes?” Usually the perpetually kindly nanny who cares for Lyanna is waiting, her own babe in a pushchair and not yet old enough to come to circle time. No one else has come to take Sansa’s little favourite home, though there are two names on the list that is kept behind the desk to ensure release to the correct adult.

 

A nod, a tightening of the small hand.

 

Stannis grinds his teeth, dealing with a pair of students who gently squabble of who pays for the late fee regarding a little-known and studied area of Maester law. The foyer is quiet now, and a little warm, but comfortable enough. Sansa settles on the long wooden bench, Lyanna climbing up beside her, leaning against her side.

 

_ Bear? You sing bear? _ Westerosi Sign Language, but simplified for small childish hands.

 

“If I finish it now, we can sing it again tomorrow?”

 

The stern little face glows as Sansa begins to sing. They do every action, from swishy swashy grass, to splishy sploshy water, and squelchy squerchy mud.

 

A cough brings her from her enjoyment, her natural teaching mode. Sansa works part time at the library as she trawls her way through an education degree; she wants to specialise in Early Years, and the library gives her the necessary experience. She loves working with little ones. She loves playing with sand, and helping tie shoe laces, and giving cuddles to sobbing children who will forget their upset in minutes, go and run and play with friends who change constantly. Little dervishes of excitement, still fresh and new and untouched.

 

_ Daddy! _ Lyanna signs, and flings herself at a black denim leg.

 

“Hey squirt.” The hands that wrap around the girl’s waist pull her high, so very high, and then strong muscled arms cradle her tight. “You botherin’ people again?”

 

“Lyanna is never a bother,” Sansa says.

 

“She’s a bugger.” Said warmly, and the child grins, nods agreeing. “But you’re the best pup a Hound can have, aren’t you, squirt?”

 

Lyanna’s father is huge. Long dark hair falls over his shoulders, and he wears a t-shirt of some long-forgotten Westerosi heavy metal band. One side of his face is a wreck of scarring and angry red, but the little girl, who gets her colouring and grumpiness from the man who holds her, kisses him over and over on the ruined tissue. Sansa, who is tall, feels a tiny delicate porcelain doll beside the man so muscled, and bearded, and untamed. Tattoos stud his arm, all swirling knotwork dogs in darkest navy, a full sleeve of slavering beautiful beasts.

 

He is solid, and masculine, and the most terrifying spectacular thing she has ever seen.

 

“Sandor Clegane,” he offers, and Sansa recognises the name from the list. “Gilly’s little ‘un is ill, so you got me today.”

 

“Sansa Stark, I teach circle time.”

 

_ Daddy is best _ .

 

“Biased shrimp that you are,” he snorts, kissing her forehead. Lyanna looks small yet comfortable in his arms, in her faded blue jeans and black t-shirt that is a tad too large. They are so similar, even in expression.

 

_ Sansa is pretty. I like Sansa. She is nice. _

 

Sansa feels her face glow very red indeed.

 

“You like your teacher, huh?” His eyes are the same shade of grey as the town of Winterfell after a snowstorm; lowering and inquisitive, and hidden depths that swirl. “And you’re right, she is pretty. She sings like a little bird, like - what are the ones with the red breasts? The ones with the spots? The ones that caw?”

 

_ Robin. Starling. Raven. _ Signed neatly, and she is given another kiss for being very clever indeed.

 

“Lyanna is a delight to have in the class,” Sansa offers, looking up his long vastness to his serious, battered face. He isn’t handsome, but the way he is with Lyanna, who is special, is-

 

“If you’re not on duty. Shit. Uh.” He glances at his daughter, nestled against his neck. “Look, she talks about you all the damned time. Says you’re the nicest lady she’s ever met, and you’ve done so much with her. Don’t talk down or anything, just treating her like she’s just another kid, and she needs that. Look, you don’t have to say yes, it’s okay if you don’t, because shit I know what I look like, and you are more than pretty, but can I get you a coffee? To say thanks for bein’ good to my girl?” A pause, before the vast man smiles, faintly. Appealingly crooked teeth, and slightly abashed, as if he is shocked at what he has said, and the corner nearest the scarring isn’t particularly mobile.

 

It is reassuring, perhaps, that Sandor Clegane doesn’t insist. He leaves the decision to Sansa, and that is something she rarely is allowed in her life.

 

“Yes,” she says, softly. “Yes, I’d like that. Thank you.” She hasn’t been for a drink, let alone a date, since Joffrey. Sandor Clegane looks dangerous, but every movement, every care he takes with his daughter, shows that he is something other than what he appears. Lyanna signs something at him, rapid and fluid, her expression oddly pleased, and he catches her hands in one of his enormous ones. “Shush, you brat.”

 

“What did she say?”

 

“That,” and he eyes the girl, who sticks out a pink tongue, with an adoring exasperation, “that you make me smile.”

 

She understands. She goes and collects her handbag from Stannis whilst briefly letting him know they are going to the cafe around the corner, opposite the park. She ends up with her arm tucked into the crook of Sandor’s as they walk, and Lyanna cannot stop grinning wildly.

 

* * *

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Since I'm writing these, I'm taking prompts - come hit me up over on [Tumblr](http://asbestosmouth.tumblr.com/).


	3. Ticketed

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt by @drgns8er : _Faeries on a train, and they didn’t pay for a ticket so they’re avoiding the ticket checker person. Idk._

* * *

 

 

Greenseers never understand the intricacies of the Great Westerosi Railway.

 

Jojen curls into his seat, headphones tucked neatly into his pointed ears, just the slightest hint of glitter about his cheeks. Most look at him and see some androgyne hipster with a taste for sparkle, clad in a sturdy thick duffle coat and skinny jeans. A normal sixteen year old exploring his sexuality, probably with a serious hard-on for Proust. The word ‘emo’ may be bandied about, or ‘alternative.’ Not that Jojen cares, obviously. He isn’t the sort to bother with what mundanes think. If Jojen Reed wants to wear black nail varnish, girl jeans, and a tight black mesh shirt with a vest under and channel his late ‘90s Westpop idol, then he’s confident enough for that.

 

Although Brian Molko totally stole that look from punk and the New Romantics, anyway. Everything is recycled these days. Even the dates.

 

“Did you buy a ticket, Jojen?”

 

“Ticket?” His head whirls with green and faerie dust and the dreams of mortals in the ether. Tickets are for humans, and he forgets that they are a requirement, every single time. The Fair Folk - the Tylwyth Teg -  have no concept of tickets, queuing, filing systems, databases, large-scale banking, not eating the flesh of humans, and cheese.

 

Bran nods slightly, dreamily, for they have been sharing visions. The otter and the wolf who race unseen through town, city, landscape, mischievous and playful in turn. Often they curl together and watch moonrises in countries a thousand miles and a thousand years hence, the small creature upon the lupine paws. Jojen has never met a human with the capabilities of his friend, who he loves with a deep green pureness that spans time and space. After all, soul mates are born, and never made. Not that Bran knows this yet, but he will, one day. Their dreams are such that they have always known each other, even before physically meeting.

 

Bran is mostly asleep, bookish and pale and pink-lipped; the journey from Moat Cailin north is long, and dull. The landscape canters past as the two carriages rattle ever onwards. There isn’t even a buffet car; only southrons get hot food on their public transport. Every so often a rather grumpy woman pushes a trolley full of coffee and chocolate past, but she seems to think the two boys wouldn’t have the cash to purchase.

 

“Do we have to have tickets? Every time we use a train? Can we not use the one we bought last time?” Jojen’s mossy green eyes widen slightly, comically.

 

“Yes. I have explained this previously.” Bran contrasts; wheelchaired and be-hoodied in dark grey and silver. “To travel by train you need to pay for it every single time.”

 

“With money?” Panic intensifies.

 

Bran smiles, a faint prettiness of his mouth. “With money. I know that greenseers really don’t use it, but we do.”

 

“How do I get a ticket?” One must be found. Immediately. Otherwise he may be physically removed from this rusting train by an angry conductor, in the middle of the North, miles from civilisation, and without Bran’s steadying humanity to protect him from the difficulties of dealing with mortals. 

 

There is a pause, emerald upon grey, before Bran’s expression softens,

 

“I got one for you, I thought you might forget.”

 

The kiss is a shyness, a brush to Bran’s pale temple, and Jojen’s lips leave a suggestion of shimmering dust. Their hands entwine, and when the conductor comes to clip the tickets, Bran is making noises in his sleep, dribbling delicately.

 

* * *

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Since I'm writing these, I'm taking prompts - come hit me up over on [Tumblr](http://asbestosmouth.tumblr.com/).


	4. Pride: In The Name Of Love

  * **Author** : AsbestosMouth
  * **Ship(s)** : Oberyn Martell/Willas Tyrell, mentions of Oberyn/Willas/Ellaria Sand
  * **Trigger Warning(s) if applicable** : N/A
  * **Rating** : PG13
  * **Brief Summary:** Is pride in another as sinful as pride in oneself, especially where love is concerned? Oberyn cripples Willas at that tournament, and this ensues. Canon(ish) and fluffy. 



_Sorry about the U2 title, you man shoot me now. Quotes from Shakespeare are just me being pretentious, as are the ‘Paradise Lost’ references. Again, shooting is perfectly reasonable in such circumstances. Written for #gameofshipschallenges - Seven Deadly Sins on Tumblr_

 

* * *

 

 

_I can see his pride_

_Peep through each part of him._

**Henry VIII** **1.1.68-9,** Abergavenny to Buckingham

 

* * *

 

 

They say that pride is the greatest and the least of sins; it is all, and both, and every little thing -  from the deadly kiss of serpents to the love for another - and Oberyn Martell is consumed.

He is the Morningstar. He is Lucifer. He is overarching hubris, and self-belief, and just as beautiful as the devils who fell. Such men blaze for mere moments in eternity, and then tumble to earth, victims of their own self-belief. He is but a man, but a man driven. He cares not what others think of his debauchery, or his passel of illegitimate daughters. He is a Prince of Dorne; the blood of Nymeria the Conqueror heats his soul and drives his heart. His cant, his self-possession, his curling voice with a hint of the sands; he is distilled arrogance, bottled egotism.

But pride, sweet and poisonous, can be softer. For one can be proud of another, can take pride in achievements and deeds and goodness. Can a man not glorify, swim, bask, in such sensation? Can a man not drink from confidence, and even taste the vainglory of another?

The boy before him is pale, and bruised, and sweet as an apple. One tempting, maddening bite, and tables turn, and Oberyn will be Eve, and the serpent this boy who drifts through currents, apologises in a low lovely voice, who drags himself up in his sickbed.

It is Oberyn’s fault; or at least he is the cause of the hurt that darkens pretty hazel eyes and turns white flesh to sweat-stained salt.

“My Lord Oberyn-”  
  
“You must rest, sweet boy. Your maester says you feel the pain even through milk of the poppy.”

He has known Willas Tyrell for sennight. For two of those days, the brave youth babbled delirious, opiates coursing through his lean body to relieve the horror of his shattered leg. The tourney continues, but Oberyn has lost his taste for playing with horses and swords. That customary desire to triumph fled when this boy - and he is a boy, he is so very young, and delicate, and should never have been in the lists, but damn his fool of a father - fell from his spirited horse and caught his foot within the stirrup.

They say he shall remain a cripple, and it was Oberyn’s lance that thrust the boy from his steed.

“Thank you for visiting.” The curve of his mouth, tugged at the corners, is fleet and rose-petal soft. In five years, when he reaches majority, he shall be a truly beautiful creature. How Mace Tyrell bred such a child he does not know; the mother is striking, and Olenna handsome, but Willas is ethereal. The paleness lends him other-worldly beauty, as if he would be taken to a realm of creatures of myth and legend if left unattended. “It is very kind of you, Prince Oberyn.”

“Ah, I would be a poor man if I did not come to see the boy who I hurt so.”

There are books piled upon the table next to the bed, thick, and leather-bound.

“It hurts less today, but please - please do not blame yourself? It was an accident, I should have kicked free as I have been taught. You did not hit me hard, my prince, I fell awkwardly. Will you sit with me for a while?”

“Of course.”

The boy is sixteen at most, and is very aware of the change of status this injury affords. It breaks Oberyn’s heart; for all of his children, he never bred a son, an heir. Willas smiles, bashful, and could tempt sin in the breast of men; hair the colour of dark heather-moor whisky falls across his forehead. There is amber in his shy yet steady gaze. He is the autumnal wistfulness of the Arbour.

“I have been left some light reading, for Grandmother tells me now that I must become a scholar. I am useless in battle, so Garlan shall take my place as a squire - I am to be a maester, though not in name. My forged links are to my family, not the Citadel, I must not forget that I am still heir, despite-” Gesturing to the leg hidden mercifully beneath his blankets, melancholy with the flitting wingbeat of a smile. “Knowledge, she tells me, is an armour, and words are to be my sword. Would-?” He pauses, and shakes his head as if he is foolish.  
  
“Would I what, sweet Willas?”

“Would you write to me, and tell me of Dorne? I must learn so much now, and I longed to visit, one day. You have the finest of horses in the Seven Kingdoms, but I shall not be able to make the journey to see them. One day I hoped to add to my father’s stables with an influx of sand steed blood. Do you know of an honourable man who could sell me a stallion, if I so wished?”  
  
“I know of a man, yes, but he is not honourable.”  
  
Willas tilts his head, so young and innocent and trusting. Oberyn wants him. He wishes to taste forbidden fruit. Seducing this boy, this wide-eyed young man who is drugged and pliant and lovely, is too much even for him.

“Who is that, my Lord?”

“I have horses. I will send you my finest stallion, as an apology for this.”

“Prince Oberyn, you do not need to apologise, and I do not need gifts, even though you are most kind to offer. You have no fault in this accident. It may have happened when I jousted another. It may have never happened. I may have died. I beg you, please do not blame yourself for what the Gods have sent to test me. I am sad, yes, but there are other routes that I can pursue that may yet prove more suitable to my temper. I am not a natural knight, and my talents are more mundane. I write tolerably well, and have some semblance of honour and wit. I talk well in company, and I consider my opinions before deciding upon a course of action. I learn quickly, and enjoy the knowledge. Perhaps Grandmother is correct, and I should be the diplomat within the family.”

“I have never known a boy so brave.” Pride glows in his voice, ember-heated.

* * *

 

_My Prince,_

_This is a mere note compared to the usual missives I send, but I must write as otherwise I shall burst. I hope the raven appreciates the lack of paper. Today I took my first step. The leg aches, and the muscles are wasted away, but I took my weight upon my limbs and I walked using the moving frame that has been constructed. I shall never walk true, and will always be lame, but this gives me such hope that perhaps I shall not be confined within a chair. I have asked for a pair of fine sticks to be carved, and have asked for the crook to be modelled upon the stallion that you so kindly loaned. Several of the mares are gravid, and we expect our first offspring soon indeed. Please give my warm regards to your brother, Prince Doran, for I am most appreciative of all of the recommendations he has suggested._

_Yours, etc._

* * *

 

_Sweet Tyrell,_

_Nothing else can be said. My pride in your strength and resolution knows no bounds. Ah, Willas, you are the best of us all._

_Yours, etc._

* * *

 

Two years. They drift on a summer breeze, of songs and another daughter. Ellaria encourages the letters, and often adds her own words beneath Oberyn’s, and Willas addresses his own postscripts, talkative and friendly, to a woman he has never met. She is blazing Dornish passion, the Dark Lady to the Fair Boy’s elegant naivete.

Oberyn loves them both, proud and arrogant and unfailing.

He comes to The Reach with his small retinue, travelling north to take the Dornish seat upon the Small Council. The sea lanes run quicker to King’s Landing, but he cannot resist the pull of the citadel of the Tyrells. Roses tumble, velvet-petalled and delicate scent caressing, and Willas sits in the arbour, a book in his hand and his head against the wooden frame.

“Sweet boy.”

“Oberyn!”

Willas has grown, and is just a little shorter than Oberyn now. He runs lean still, wears his hair cropped short, and it emphasises leonine cheekbones and glowing hazel eyes. Compared to the heated glances of his overly precocious youngest brother, and his sin-lovely sister, Willas is almost plain. In another family he would be the most beautiful, the most coveted, but within the Tyrell sphere, he is sweet wild climbing tea-roses compared to glass-house showiness.

He is more than the sum of his parts.

Willas limps forward, courageous and determined, and collapses into Oberyn’s warm embrace. He belongs there, like Ellaria; his beautiful pale-cheeked boy and his exquisite dark-haired concubine. They do not vie, for there is enough room in the prince’s generous heart for two loves. He imagines them a-bed, awaiting him, Willas’ head pillowed upon a perfect olive-skinned breast as Ellaria runs her fingers across his long slim thighs. He sees them lovemaking, shyness and expertise and flickering tongues, gasping worship and heat and sex. In that moment he joins them in smoke-tasting debauchery, the boy between them, breaking so beautifully as he is worked and loved and used to whimpering completion.

“Come with me to Dorne. I would show you the world.”

“I would follow you to hell and back.”

He kisses him upon the forehead, a brush to the soft skin, the scratch of stubble and the hint of sweat from riding hard for days to reach Highgarden.

“That is from Ellaria,” he whispers, and the pink that glows upon Willas’ cheeks is as delicate as that of the roses about his bower. The youth’s tastes tend Dornish; no boredom of one gender for his Tyrell.

“This, sweet boy, is from me.”

Lips meet, almost chaste, and Oberyn is lost. Lost, and found, and home, and somewhere else dizzying and wondrous. Lost to hazel eyes that shine almost golden, and the taste of tart apples and wine, and the tiny catch in Willas’ throat as he gasps against Oberyn’s loving mouth.

Pride can burn, and drag, and devour. Pride can buoy, and encourage, and love. It is a balance of a sin, upon a the weighing scales of justice, and the heart can weigh heavy as lead or light as gossamer.

Love, and pride, are intermarried, entwined and feasting.

* * *

 


	5. Greed: Pernicious Root

  * **Author** : AsbestosMouth
  * **Ship(s)** : Stannis/Davos
  * **Trigger Warning(s) if applicable** : Mentions of character death. 
  * **Brief Summary** : Stannis stalks the battlements of Castle Black, and Davos worries that his King’s obsession and hunger for the Iron Throne will bring their destruction. 



_Day 2 of @gameofshipschallenges Seven Deadly Sins challenge. Again with the Shakespeare, today we have some Macbeth, again with the pretentiousness. Slash but could also be read as bromance. Mostly canon._

 

* * *

 

 

_This avarice_

_Strikes deeper, grows with more pernicious root._

_- **Macbeth** , Act IV, Scene III_

* * *

 

 

He will take the seven kingdoms, or he will die. They will all die.

“My lord, you must eat.” Kind words sing, and he turns to his Hand who worries at his elbow. “You did not eat this morning, or last night. You will starve yourself, and I have no onions to smuggle to you.”  
  
It drags forth the faint iron-wrought smile of the Lord of Dragonstone, the true king of Westeros, before the shutters slam closed and he is but a statue.

Davos worries, and Stannis can almost taste it. As war continues in a bloody attrition, as death tolls rise and the snow blankets Castle Black, and as pretty Jon Snow refuses to take the offer of Winterfell and legitimacy, he grows more inward, more obsessive. His colours flicker from battlements, his Red Priestess paces and looks upon Shireen with her royal blood and ruined grey-mottled face. They grow to desperation with each ice-crackling breath, and the greed for glory and righteousness sears brighter than even the pyres of R'hllor.

“I am not hungry.” Sharply, and another man would turn at the tone, but Davos - his Hand, his saviour, his moral compass and judgment, and the best of men - gazes steadily into Stannis’ bleak face.

“Then something warm to drink? Some spiced wine?”

“No.”  
  
Hands find his, shortened fingers about his palm, and he is unwillingly turned to Seaworth.

“I will not stand here,” and Davos’ voice is rough and aching, “and watch you kill yourself with your obsession. You are my King, my Lord, and I will never leave you. You told me once that you saw a man wearing a blazing crown of iron in the flames, that the king burned to ash as the fire consumed him. The fires are taking you, Stannis. They are taking you from me, before my eyes. I watch you order more burnings. I see men fear you more than they respect you. You are so hungry for the throne, my Lord, that you are losing yourself to what you most feared. Your greed for vengeance is losing you all that you love, and yet you stand there and allow it to eat your soul.”

“It is not greed.” His hand pulls back, finds his Onion Knight’s furred cloak. “It has never been greed! I am the king, the rightful king. Robert died, and I am his true heir. My cause is righteous, and just, and it is my duty to rule. Justice for my brother, for those who have been wronged, for my family, for all that I hold in esteem. The kingdom needs leadership, for we know that above all the real fight is to come. If I do not win this war, Seaworth, then we all perish. Every last little one of us, from the greatest to the least. If I do not triumph, then Winter shall devour the living, and turn all to death. Do you not see this? I did not ask for a crown. I did not ask for any of this. Yet, I find myself in this situation, dealing with bastards and criminals, upon the Wall, whilst the Kingdoms scream and the Walkers pace ever south. The means justify the end, even if we are meant to suffer. Would you have me shirk my duty? Would you have me turn away from this and damn us all?”

“You have men burned-”

“Fire destroys ice, Davos.”

“My Lord,” and Seaworth’s dear, exhausted face is open, and honest, and full of love. “I worry for you. I worry for Shireen. If I could, I would take you both on a fleet ship, to Essos where we would be safe, away from this fucking madness. I would carry your burden, until the end of my days, if you would let me. But I am scared, my King. I am scared I am losing you to the Red Woman and her magicks, to war. To how far you would go to guarantee your victory.”

Stannis rests his pale forehead upon Davos’ windburned brow, the chill painful and aching. For a moment they stand pause, before the mutilated gloved hand brushes lightly across hollow cheekbones, leather slipping to the curve of his jaw.

“It is greed, I suppose, to want to save the world. Hunger, and avarice. I would do anything, Davos.”

“Let me help you, Stannis? Let me in.”

The embrace is fierce, protective. He buries his cheek into the furs at Davos’ throat as fingers stroke through his thinning hair, the back of his neck. All at once he wants more, and to pull away; just a kiss to the forehead from a man who thinks he is a god. For half a minute and more they are silent, and the snow falls thickly, and the cold promises to ice limbs and freeze lips.

“Support me in what needs to be done.”

“Anything, my lord. I support you in all things.”

Even when Shireen burns, and Stannis is slain by the tall Tarth warrior with the sapphire eyes. Even when, numb and aching and mourning the man he loves who died for righteous greed, the justice of avarice, he follows pretty Jon Snow and acts as father.

Even then, when the Boltons rise, and Winter strikes, and there is nothing but cold and pain? He understands.

His own obsession, after all, is a greedy gathering of memories. Storm-blue eyes. Perpetual stubble. The endless dance of men in love who do not realise their mutual regard until death comes between them for all eternity.

 

* * *

 


	6. Envy: Green-Eyed

  * **Author** : _AsbestosMouth_
  * **Ship(s)** : Jaime/Brienne
  * **Trigger Warning(s) if applicable** : Death, sex, blood, loss of virginity. The usual GoT fare. Mature for themes but tagging NC17 in case. 
  * **Brief Summary** : Jealousy is a green-eyed Lannister, envious of Brienne’s skill, decency, honour, and, above all, her hands. A skirmish against brigands makes Jaime reassess.



_Day 4 of @gameofshopschallenges is Envy. Today’s Shakespeare comes from The Merchant of Venice. Canon compliant after the rescue from the bear, and Jaime loses his hand._

 

* * *

 

 

_As doubtful thoughts, and rash-embraced despair,_

_And shuddering fear, and green-eyed jealousy!_

**_The Merchant of Venice_** , Act III Sc. II

 

* * *

 

 

Jealousy is unbecoming in a knight, but he feels it every time he watches Brienne swing that thrice damned Lannister-born sword.

She twists, blood-smeared and repulsive and wonderful, and he hates the unwitting hold she has upon him, and loves the very core of the warrior woman before him. Ugly wench, broken-nosed, straw-haired, her teeth suited to a warhorse. Overplump lips that seem as if she has been kissed by a desperate other, which squeezes his gut in a sick-making hate for the imaginary man. Muscle cording as she turns her head and thrusts Oathkeeper into the belly of another bandit who dare attack.

Her hands.

Freckles muddied with gore, and strong, and nails bitten to the quick. They strain and flex, turn and grasp. So easily she uses them, not understanding that they are so easily lost.

He envies her hands so very much. Once Jaime danced in skirmishes, purposeful and fluid. Once he rode tourneys, and charmed women, and was whole and handsome and the gilded lion of the Lannisters. Once his fingers slid across Cersei’s curved flesh, pleasuring with the scratching of nails down her spine, teasing between her thighs, tangling in her shining golden hair so much like his own.

He kicks at some fool who comes too near, dagger clumsy in his remaining hand, slits him from sternum to groin with a grunted effort. Leather parts, intestines coil, and he shoves the corpse back as it cracks out gasped death whines through lungs that no longer hold air.

Brienne races over, carthorse colt that she is, and slides Oathkeeper into the man’s spine with a resounding crunch of bone, and blood, and her expression is pure fury. For a mere moment she lingers, a question in her eyes, before back to the fray she slips; wraith-like, and liquid, like water on a blazing day, or kisses upon a fevered brow. She fights with grace that belies her awkward mannish figure, as if she is the Bride of War rather than the Maid of Tarth.

He should protect her. Bears, and pink gowns, and wooden training swords. Now she protects him, as he hauls himself to his feet, the bones of his hand in a velveteen sack hanging from his throat. It defenestrates his masculinity, pulls him downward to an abyss of loathing, castrates his mind.

They kill the last man together, a dervish of Valyrian steel and blackened blade that dispatches the deceased in a moment.

“Cowards.” She grasps his forearm with a right hand that exists, and his green eyes harden for a long moment. Envy, jealousy, yearning. He lost his damned hand, and Brienne still has hers, and it burns more than a funeral pyre at his throat and head. It threatens to destroy him. “Did they hurt you?”  
  
“When a man with one hand can kill them, wench-” He keeps his tone light, or attempts to. Her expression changes at his words, at the requiem of bitterness painting his tongue emerald, and Jaime berates himself. For weeks he has slipped between appreciation and lashing out, vacillation; pride in his warrior woman and hate because she is a sum of all parts while he languishes, disfigured and useless and hurting.

“I am well, Brienne. I am well.”

She smiles warily, shy and exhausted, and it blots out the sun.

“I could teach you, with your left hand?”

“I’d still be useless, wench.”

“Strap a shield to your right arm, and you can still fight. I believe that you can, even if-” And she swallows, and Jaime realises she understands everything, all of that hate and envy and longing, and he feels forged scales fall from his heart and eyes with the pounding of blacksmithing hammers. “Even if you don’t believe you can. I have faith.”

“You’re a bloody fool.” He kisses her then, because he must, tasting blood about her wide mouth, hands in her filthy hair, his tongue parting the seam of her lips and claiming her with hunger. She is frozen against him, for long seconds, before she makes a tiny noise deep in her chest, her beautiful Gods-given hands sliding up his back, at his shoulders, pulling him close, an armoured thigh helpless between his.

“These are mine,” he eventually chokes out, when they come to. He managed to drag her from the clearing and fuck her not on a pile of the dead but in a pine-scented hollow; Brienne is no longer the Maid of Tarth, but his. Her maiden blood smears across his lower belly, and Jaime wears the dried redness like a talisman. No time even to remove their armour - just unbuckling leather and mail complaining - then rutting helpless against a tree with her breath laboured and his hand at the small of her broad back. “Your hands, mine.”

Brienne tilts her ugly head, sweat staining her cheeks, her lovely eyes glowing and sated and happy for the first time he has ever seen. Like this, well-fucked and claimed, and still the warrior, she is the most beautiful, good, truly honorable Seven-sent woman. Silently she takes his wrist, and presses her mouth to the slick ruin of his stump, rubs her cheek complete with her own heavy scarring across his own broken flesh.

Acceptance of what he is.

Acceptance of what she is.

She does not care he is maimed, less of a man. Brienne wants him. Just as he wants her, the entirely ridiculous wench that she is, and the envy at what she is still burns. Warrior. Un-maimed. His protector. Jaime is a jealous fury, a green-eyed monster of a man, but when he winds about his wench, and she is his hands, his morals, his salvation from the dark pits of hellish despair, he allows himself to finally breathe.

 

* * *

 


	7. Gluttony: Surfeit

**Author** : AsbestosMouth  
**Ship(s)** : Jon/Sam  
**Trigger Warning(s) if applicable** : Food porn (not literally), mentions of cannibalism >.> PG13.  
**Brief Summary** : Winter is coming, bringing death. Cold. White Walkers. Starvation. Of course Sam dwells upon past feasts, to get him through each minute that pulls him towards death. At least he has Jon’s kindness and vitality to sustain him. Just a little.

_Day 5 of @gameofshipschallenges is Gluttony. GRR is known for his food porn, and I’m on his wavelength - writing this made me really hungry. Today’s Shakespeare is from The Merchant of Venice. Tiny bits of slash if squinting, bromance if you don’t. Canon compliant. Almost wrote Ramsay violence porn instead, but I was a Good Person (for once)._  
  


* * *

 

  
_They are as sick that surfeit  
with too much as they are that starve with nothing._

  
_**The Merchant of Venice**_ Act I, Sc. II

 

* * *

 

 

Winter breaks, heavy, and death-laden, and terrible. To the north the footfalls seem soft for now, but in hours, days, weeks, they shall shake the Seven Kingdoms with their Whiteness.

Honey cakes, cloyingly rich. Breads made with thick treacle and oats, sweet upon the tongue. Steaming chunks of pigeon pie, pastry thick and crisp as teeth bite, burning lips and soft palate as they are gobbled. Bowls of brown slurped down after a long day in the frozen tundra beyond the Wall.

He grits his teeth, hands half-dead upon the bowstaff. About his neck the metal of his maester chain sticks to skin, pulling the first layer from the epidermis, and yet he feels nothing but the ice. It is too cold to feel the pain of something that is not cold, something that is not frozen flesh dying blackened upon fingertips and toes, or noses, or once-red lips.

Rabbit, the skin crispy and tearing, the pink meat yielding. The scent of grease in the fire as the spit turns hypnotically, the small boy at the side of the range salivating. Overheated fires. Laughter as he tries to steal a lemon cake, and the cook berates him with a kind sort of roughness but allows him to devour the treat without Lord Tarly knowing. It hurts to think of such things, but he cannot help it. All he can do is stop himself falling to his knees as the cold destroys the world. All he can do is feel the frost tighten his cheeks, and crust upon his thin beard, and wait for it all to end.

Lamprey pie. Roast mutton. Thick yellow custard that a spoon can stand in, with gingerbread to dip, scented with spice brought north from Dorne. Beetroot stew. Good hard cheese from the Crownlands, sharply addictive, thickly layered between hearty slices of sourdough bread. Butter. Rich golden butter.

His fingers slip, helpless, and an arm catches about his chest before he falls on his face. Dark curls, the sullen melancholia of his Lord, a heartening pat to the back and then an arm around him as he struggles to lock his knees and remain upright. For a moment there is warmth, and a longing, and the touch of maille-shod leather gloves, before he sighs.

“I’m hungry, Jon.”

“Supplies will be here soon.” The smile is reassuring, until Sam understands that this is a lie.

They are starving to death, the ragged army of Jon Snow. They stand with the Night’s Watch, and the Wildlings, these remnants of the glorious North, and they starve to death. The Vale shall not save them once more, for Littlefinger turns his machinations elsewhere. King’s Landing bathes in blood.

Dragons, they say, bring the south to her knees.

Perhaps if they turn North he will finally be warm once more, when flesh melts like glue from his skeleton under the burning breaths of the wyrms. Anything to feel some heat - Sam almost welcomes that funeral pyre.

Feasts where his father glares and despises, his mother fussing and kindly and giving him second helpings of pudding. Memories of food filling his belly, ghosts of meals past. Memories that are cold and dead and nothing and make him hunger more. Sour cherries in liquour. Tormund’s moonshine, guaranteed to knock a Southron from his perch in ten seconds flat whilst the big redhaired warrior roars laughter. Sharing an over-ripe but delicious plum with Jon, Sam removing the stone with a measured ease and then cutting the fruit in two as they whisper and plot dreamily in the ways of boys, not men.

“Do we have wine? Please?” He is begging, and Sam hates it. He hates this. Everything. The snow, and the stench of unwashed warriors. Memories of sated desire, of fingers sucked clean, of animal bones white-picked upon his trencher plate. He hates he is in thrall to two things in his life; food and Jon Snow.

A skin pushes at his stiff fingers, and he takes it. Jon still has an arm about his diminished shoulders. Sam is still fat, is still mocked. They tell him when the rats run out, he is next. He cannot tell if they jest, because every man and woman is too far gone now. In Sam’s swimming hunger-addled head they look at his thighs and belly and dream of pork crackling.

Jon will not let them.

He would die for Jon. Everyone knows that. Especially Sam.

The whiteness flickers, and the wight upon the skeletal horse raises a blue-glowing sword. Around him the dead boil. They writhe. Snow falls heavy and leaden, and the grey dusk drains to black and white in almost a moment. Archers tense, and bowstrings strain, and Jon’s hand tightens upon Sam’s shoulder, anchoring them both to that moment where they both realise - this is it.

Night is come, dark and full of terrors.

He hopes he shall live to see the Dawn.

 

* * *

 


	8. Wrath: Enrage the Heart

**Author** : AsbestosMouth  
 **Ship(s)** : Arya/Pod  
 **Trigger Warning(s) if applicable** : Bad language. Mature for that.  
 **Brief Summary** : No One returns to Winterfell, bearing her true name. The anger of her past threatens to overwhelm, and Arya is unable to control her wrath. Luckily there is a kindly squire there to bring her back from the edge.

_Prompt for @gameofshipschallenges day 6 is Wrath. Today’s Shakespeare is from Macbeth. Woo. I like this ship. Bit, no, lot stream of consciousness, this one. (Also have been at the port, so formatting issues are that, if there are any)._

* * *

 

_Let grief Convert to anger; blunt not the heart, enrage it._   
****

**_Macbeth_** Act IV, Sc III

 

* * *

 

 

The Waif lies dead.

No One is dead.

She stalks across the Waking Sea like a tempest of fury, eyes glowing mercury and her heart ablaze.

Ja’qen. She named him, she gave him his name, and he begged her to recant. He knew. Every moment of every hour of every day he knew. Her eyes, he said in those tones that drift, in the voice that pulls her to pieces, were never those of No One. Always Arya Stark of Winterfell, sister of Robb, daughter of Ned, blood of the Builder who carved the North from ice.

He kissed her once, soft and almost loving, but he knew too much. They all knew too much. Nothing is Black and White, just a myriad of greys that make her blind even now to everything apart from the gnawing hunger for blood and sacrifice and pain. Pain of others. Pain that makes her feel this wrenching hunger for flesh splitting and death gnawing.

Her wounds ache, but she drives onwards. Westeros cowers under her feet as she turns north upon a stolen horse that reminds her of the Hound’s half-mad stallion. She recites her list, and her chest burns, it splits, it pours.

She hears of the Stark at Winterfell, and for that moment she almost grasps hope within her fingers. Needle beats her hip, and the name of the Stark is Sansa, and hope bubbles and bursts in the breadth of a single heartbeat.

But Sansa. Sansa. She sees, when she clatters on her half-dead horse into the courtyard where she spent her childhood fighting and being a boy, being Arry, the Arry she has always been, not just when she needed to hide. She sees the expression in her sister’s Tully eyes. Even as Jon sweeps her into the tightest of embraces, even as he names her Arya over and over and over until she cannot forget who she is, and No One is that tiny speck of poison wormed into her head, and she is named.

She and Sansa have more in common than blood, her sweet sister turning to intrigue and death, and for the first time in her entire life Arya is in awe of the grey-clad woman who commands with a nod of her chestnut head. She is not a silly girl with a taste for princes, and embroidery, and foolish notions of white knights kissing her fingers in cherry-scented bowers. She is granite and ice and Winterfell, like the chatelaines of the past. She is steel and ivory and porcelain, bound in iron strength.

She forces fights, and wears the wounds, the rage in her heart overflowing. Dead. All dead. Dead Starks paving the way of the Walkers who are coming, Winter is coming, and she lashes out and hates and snarls and is the Wolf. They refuse to spar not because she wins but because she cannot stop herself, pull back, she gives in to that beast that twists her guts and taints her soul. The squire with the dark eyebrows and the kindly earnest expression offers, but the Lady of Tarth places her hand upon his wide shoulders and tells him that he is needed elsewhere.

She does not wish her squire to die, not like this. Arya understands, but she needles at the knights, at that blond cunt Lannister, at the big redhaired Wildling who pats her upon her hair and tells her to piss off and bother someone else. She watches Jaime and Tormund and Brienne and tastes their blood upon her sword in her dreams, and feasts upon their corpses in her rage that burns burns burns until her head is such that she cannot contain it any more, and she steps into the snows where the Walkers will come because it is the only way the pressure and pain and agony of being so furious at everything like Father’s death and she remembers the snick of the axe and the way the maille pressed into her cheek and the fleeing and Gendry wherever he is and the betrayal and that Red Whore who she will slaughter in her bed and Melisandre sees that she knows because the Fires told her the fucking bitch the cunt Gendry was her friend and she cannot sleep she cannot eat all she can do is fight fight slay bleed taste death the list in her head her arms ache her scars ache her mind flails and aches and-

Hands catch her wrists, and she realises she is dripping blood. Detached. Red trailing Essosi-browned skin. Brought back from the hellishness by the simple action of someone daring to touch.

Shock is colder than Winter. Shock brings her back.

The kind squire frowns, finds a cloth in his tunic, carefully wraps it about the heaviest wound that seeps just below the cuff of her shirt, before she is in his arms and weeping. Keening. Like the Wolf, howling in the darkness for everything she has lost.

Kindness. She has forgotten what that is. So young. So little kindness to a girl in the world. What is this boy with his broad gentle frame, and dark hair, who is never Gendry or Ja’qen; would they be so kind to a stranger? Would they gather the girl self-destructing into their chests even if she could slaughter them, for Podrick is unarmed and unarmoured and softness and warmth, and just let them cry?

His hand finds her hair, strokes rhythmically. Soft noises, like Cat made when Theon smacked her across the back of the legs with his practice sword when she was five, or frustration with stupid sewing lessons, or because Robb and Jon would be warriors and she had to have babies and play houses with someone she’d hate because of what is between her legs.

The kiss, when it comes, is messy and teeth-filled. They clash, and Podrick mumbles an apology against her mouth, but her fingers are at the nape of his neck and press him closer. For long moments she loses herself into him, dominating, claiming, desperate to feel something apart from destruction and grief and the anger that threatens to send her over the edge into an abyss that will swallow young girls with Needles.

She tucks into him, and he sits freezing upon the snow as it seeps through wool and boiled leather, Arya on his thighs so the cold does not touch her. Just so very simple, and so very kind, and that is all Arya has wanted, since aeons before she and Father and Sansa left Winterfell, when she kissed her mother goodbye, when Jon gave her Needle, and Theon grinned crookedly. When Bran stood, strong, and Rickon snarled about, the youngest and most feral of the pack.

When she was Arya, daughter of Winterfell. Just someone kind to her.

Podrick pulls his cloak from his shoulders and bundles it about her, frowning, babbling about bleeding and blood loss, and seeing the maester, and that she must eat something, perhaps some spiced wine like they have at Castle Black? and how she must rest.

For the first time, for so many years, she understands that not all men must die.

 

* * *

 


	9. Breakfast in Bed

**Author** : AsbestosMouth

**Ship(s)** : Margaery/Bronn  
 ****

**Trigger Warning(s) if applicable** : Bad cooking, fluffiness.  
 ****

**Brief Summary** : Margaery doesn’t usually cook, but for once she decides to surprise Bronn with breakfast in bed. She doesn’t usually cook for a very bloody good reason.

Prompt by [@jillypups](https://tmblr.co/m7elBgSaeSgxJtegwwLNhAg):   _Person A: “Look baby I brought you breakfast in bed!” Except it’s DISGUSTING and person B tries to choke it down so person A’s feelings don’t get crushed (Me I see Bronn and Margaery but if you want t to do it you pick whichever ship you see fit!)_

 

* * *

 

**  
**“Baby, I made you breakfast in bed!” **  
**

Bronn is deep in dreams of Margaery Tyrell, so being woken by her is not any sort of hardship whatsoever. She smiles, tray in one hand, tucking her tumbling hair back behind her perfect ear. Damn she’s gorgeous - unfairly so if you’re not shagging her, and smugly so if you are. All legs, and quirky cuteness, and a twisty-pretty grin as she settles next to him.

It smells good.

He scruffs a hand through his hair, down his neck, across his naked chest with a rake of nails.

“Shall I feed you, baby?” Another of those smirky smiles, and to be honest Bronn would let her tapdance on his scrotum if he keeps having sex with her. Kissing her. Holding her hand. Doing all those relationship things he always shat upon before the vision that is Margaery Tyrell descended from whatever supernatural realm she inhabits.

Tyrell genetics are insane. There are weirdos in Essos who’d pay through the bloody nose to get their hands on the genome that makes every single one of Margaery and her brothers ridiculously attractive.

And Margie? Margie’s shagging him. She is shagging Bronn Blackwater, sergeant in the Royal Fusiliers; the man who has always prefered guns and ammo to meaningful relationships with persons of the opposite sex. Of course he’s had those with blokes before - not like that, shit no. Screwing Sandor, or Lannister? He’d have his cock ripped off by the former, and he’s not butch enough for Jaime, seducer of Captain Tarth, is he?

_Obviously the personality outweighs the looks there, Bronn_ , he tells himself as the perfect sultry vision of Margaery Tyrell in nothing but a lacy apron and no knickers perches 1950s housewife upon the bed next to him. Gingham suits her, even if it strains over certain parts of her anatomy. Not that he’s complaining, shit no! Hell, Margie in sackcloth and ashes would still look a million dragons, and far more stylish than any strung-out tart in posh designer clobber.

“What you made me, sweetness?”

“Pancakes, with golden syrup and sugar. Just like you like them.” A wide unadulterated beaming smile, with that special Margaery wonkiness. Fuck, he might have to put a ring on it if she continues like this.

Margie peers demure-devilish under her endless eyelashes, cuts a bite of pancake, dunks it liberally in syrup, and pops it in his waiting mouth.  
  
They are literally the worst pancakes that anyone has managed to shit out since records began. They are….fuck. Fuck. Warrior. That bad that he almost doesn’t manage to chew and swallow it down. He does though. Bronn is a soldier. He has seen terrible things in his time, including Varys naked. Manfully he makes his way through every single scrap of breakfast because, fuck it all, Margie got up early on her day off from work, made him breakfast out of the goodness of her heart.

Also he loves her, so crushing her burgeoning culinary exploration would just be a shitty thing to so.

She gives a happy please noise, and removes her apron with a tug of the neatly tied bow, and suddenly pancakes where the sugar turned out to be salt really doesn’t matter in the whole scheme of things. Nope. Not at all.

Anyway, spare syrup. Maybe he’ll make like a Hobbit, smear it over his beautiful girlfriend, and just have second breakfast instead?

 

* * *

 


	10. In Tents

**Author** : AsbestosMouth  
 ****

**Ship(s)** : Brienne/Jaime. Wooo  
 ****

**Trigger Warning(s) if applicable** : English Civil War Re-enactment.  
 ****

**Brief Summary** : Jaime, Brienne, and others are involved in re-enactment. Of course the British weather conspires to ruin everything, and when Jaime’s tent is flooded, he has to bunk with Brienne. In a one-man tent.

_Prompt by anon:  anything with Jaime & Brienne please! thank you :)_

_I am aware that people like the Sealed Knot use proper weaponry. This is crossed with the LARPing I used to do. Nothing better than painting yourself green and being a Goblin._

 

* * *

 

“Shift over, wench.”  
  
“Stop taking up so much space then,” she sighs, trying to tuck her legs up. Jaime could point out that her legs, like the rest of her, are so ridiculous that trying to make herself smaller will make no difference whatsoever, but he lets her contort for a moment, around piles of armour, and that sword she insists she has to keep near her because Jaime bought it for her as a present in a moment of weakness and Brienne loves it.

“It’s not my fault my tent got flooded, is it? I can’t control the British weather, as much as you think the sun shines out of me, woman.”

“The sun doesn’t shine out of you. My name is Brienne. Stop encroaching on my side of the tent.”  
  
“It’s a one man tent, and between us we make up approximately two point five men. Where am I supposed to put my feet? Outside? It’s raining outside. I’ll catch pneumonia, and it’ll all be your fault. _Wench_.”

She elbows him as she turns over, pulling her sleeping bag up over her delightfully broken nose.

Rain patters on polyester, fingertips on the drumskin of life.

“Stop breathing down my neck.”  
  
“I’m breathing in general. Your neck just happens to be in the way.”

“Gah!” Sitting up. Brienne manages to get her hair caught on the battery-powered hurricane lamp swaying overhead. “This is not working. I’m going for a walk.”  
  
“It’s dawn,” he points out, yawning. “We’re getting up in half an hour anyway to secure the battlefield. We have about a million jaunty little flags on sticks to put down, in the quagmire that beckons. Hope you’re waterproof.”  
  
“More than your bloody tent,” she snips, wriggling onto her front with a flash of sensible black boyshort knickers, her t-shirt hanging loose and showing impressive abs, the hint of underboob as he tries not to peer under the cotton. “You are going to get a new tent, whether you like it or not, Lannister, or you’ll be sleeping with Sam and Jon.”  
  
“But they’re boring,” he sings, like a five year old. The freckles trace down the back of her spine as she shrugs her top over her head, pointedly facing away from him. Brienne is lickable, like a lollipop. She’d taste of ill-concealed peevishness. “All they do is argue about fantasy novels, and talk about their girlfriends. Are all northerners obsessed with ginger women?”  
  
Brienne stares at him, eyebrows sharp and drawn, before she manages to pull on her padded under armour, then the cuirasse that she hand made. Unlike others, which need some breast clearage for the female occupier, hers is smooth and shining. She polishes it every evening, after muster, and Jaime now has a strange Pavlov style reaction to Silvo metal cleaner. One whiff, and he’s happily thinking about strong shoulders, her lip between her teeth as she gets into the crannies, and sporting a semi hard-on.

On with the greaves. She plays a captain rather than an aristocrat, unlike Jaime. He’s in it for the epic hats covered with feathers, and the beard he can legitimately sport six weekends and one full week of the year.

And Brienne. Obviously. Not that she knows that she is the reason that Jaime joined this English Civil War re-enactment group. Because he fancies the pants off her, and has a thing for her in full armour. Because he’s loved her for years. Because she’s a stubborn cow, and he thinks she’s brilliant.

Bucket boots on, lobster-tailed pot in hand, she stares at him one last time, on the edge of telling him that he is a twat, before she ducks out into the rain.

She forgot Oathkeeper. Daft wench. Jaime crawls into his gear, gathers his own weaponry, and trails after her, poking passers by with her sword’s rubber tip.

 

* * *

 

“My tent is dead. Sacrificed to the weather gods.”  
  
No horses for this skirmish, and they wouldn’t let Jaime bring someone with him to follow him around bashing two coconut shells together in lieu of horseflesh, so they hang out with the rest of the ranks. Across the field the Roundheads mill. Stannis Baratheon looks as if this is an actual battle, the stupid bastard always taking everything seriously. Davos, who is a sound bloke, shares a sandwich with his equally sound son. He wonders when Stannis and Davos will realise that they’ve basically been a couple for the last eighteen years.

It’ll be amusing as hell when it sinks in.

Martell nudges him in the ribs. The bastard isn’t muddy. Everyone else is muddy. Bloody Oberyn.

“I have a tent, if you wish, dear boy.”  
  
Who made him General? Why isn’t Jaime General? He’s just a Colonel.

“Knowing what you get up to in that tent, Martell, I’ll pass.”  
  
The Dornishman chuckles. The feathers in his excellent hat, and Jaime now has hat envy, bob damply, all bronze and red. “Ellaria could not come to this event. I have been lonely-”  
  
“Sorry I’m late,” Willas says. He smiles, all warmth and schoolboyish cheer, even if he is approaching thirty. “Couldn’t find my knee brace. For some reason it was hiding behind the beer tent! I’ve not even been behind the beer tent. I bet Loras and Renly have though. Gits.”

Oberyn looks at Tyrell with abject fascination. No. Lust.

“Ellaria,” Jaime reminds him.”  
  
“Shares,” Oberyn murmurs, with a wink.”

“Biscuit?” Willas waves ANZAC cookies at them, and of course they have to eat them. It’d be rude not to.  
  
“I’ll bring my spare tent for you, dear Jaime.” Oberyn licks his gloved fingers clean, rather blow-jobby, wanting to see if Willas reacts. To Martell’s abject curiosity, Tyrell just crunches on another biscuit, chattering to everyone around them. Including Brienne, who towers over everyone apart from that enormous twat Gregor, who is smoking, eating a seriously tasty looking pink-iced cupcake, and talking to his wife on the phone, all at the same time.

The brother, lesser in height but just as much as a twat, is doing exactly the same thing, albeit on the Roundhead side of the field. His cupcake is chocolate. He’s knocked up that redhaired Stark girl - what is it about gingers in the north? Something in the water?

 

* * *

 

“New tent. Tada!”

“Jaime. Where is my tent?”  
  
“There was a tiny accident, involving drunk gays, but I’m sure it’ll pop back up when you get it home and dry.” Renly and Loras are most obliging when Jaime asks if he can blame his own machinations on their need to have sex all over the place. Not that they did destroy Brienne’s tent in that way, and everything was removed before they all jumped on it, and it isn’t totally dead. Just muddy. And soaking wet. Uninhabitable. She’ll have to sleep with Jaime, again. Shame? Not really.

Plans are afoot, after all, because of Oberyn Martell’s spare tent.  
  
Brienne twitches, her fingers tightening around Oathkeeper’s foam-rubber hilt. She usually pulls her blows in battle, but if she went for him, she’d get him as hard as possible.

“Come share this one. It’s a two man, and everything. We’ll only have to slightly annoy each other, rather than generally be in each other’s face.”  
  
He wouldn’t mind being in Brienne’s face. Or other parts of her.

“And, and!” He waves his arms. “It is tall enough that even you can stand up in it to dress. No wriggling about like the slug, or the worm, for you, wench.”

A glare, before she stalks past, into the tent.

 

* * *

 

Watching Oberyn watch Willas, who is totally unaware of being watched, is hilarious.

“Why does he not lust for me?”  
  
“Because not everyone in the world that you want to shag wants to shag you, Obi.”

Oberyn looks perturbed. “I have never been turned down before. I do not wish for this to occur. He is very pretty, is he not? Like a delicious unspoiled Loras, with better cheekbones, and less arrogance. Innocence. Divine.”  
  
“You are a tart and a lech, Martell.”  
  
“How goes your pursuit of the lovely Brienne?”  
  
“She isn’t your lovely Brienne, she is mine.”  
  
“I do not mind if you have her in my tent, but you must tell me every detail.”  
  
It would be justice to pour his beer over Oberyn’s smug head, but also a waste of not that bad ale. Davos, who works in a pub, always brings crates of proper stuff, and shares it equally amongst the Roundheads and the Cavaliers. Davos is nothing but a filthy socialist.

“Anyway,” he says. “I’m off to bed.”

“Have fun.” Oberyn is staring at Willas again, who is huddled with Jon and Sam and arguing about Pern.

 

* * *

 

“Jaime, stop breathing on me.”  
  
“I can’t help breathing on you. Stop cuddling me if-? Hang on.”

She sighs, warm across his nipple. “You were cold, and insisted on me warming you up. You wouldn’t let me sleep unless I cuddled you. I wanted to sleep, and therefore I cuddled you. You can let me go, now.”  
  
“No.” It worked. It bloody well worked! The tent, the pretending to be cold in the night. Everything. His mind, foggy, slowly clears, like mist burning away on an april morning.  
  
Brienne frowns, all mussed blonde hair and eyelashes like white starfishes. “No?”  
  
“No.” His arms tighten, because they can, pulling her further against his chest. “No, you’re not going anywhere, dammit.”  
  
“Are you drunk?”  
  
“No! Perhaps I want to cuddle with you, wench, did you ever think of that?” He takes a deep breath, charges forward. Lannisters are brave, after all; lion-like, and bold. “Perhaps I want to cuddle with you, have a leisurely breakfast, beat the shit out of Stannis Baratheon for being overly-serious, then kiss your face off in the moment of our victory, Captain Tarth? Have you ever thought I might want to do that, and having you wandering about, being you - you wench - for the last four bloody years, and wanting to do that, has driven me to destroying your tent so I can possibly end up cuddling you?”  
  
“You did what to my tent?!” Her voice, usually low and husky, rises in pitch, travelling octaves.

“Shush,” he orders, and then he kisses her, ahead of schedule. This should be for after seeing Stannis’ defeated expression, and Davos clapping his commander on the shoulder and saying that it had been an excellent battle. There should be wolf whistles and cat calls, and armour digging into the back of his neck as Brienne wraps her arms around him to deepen the kiss.

But no.

She is still for a moment, and in that moment he wonders if he has miscalculated. Still for that endless pause, before she is on top of him, attacking with that wide plush mouth, masculine and wonderful and Brienne - like she is in everything.

They end up missing the fight, both of them.

Stannis wins the battle, because they aren’t there.

Jaime finds he doesn’t care. Because, in all realities, and obviousness, and wonderful wenchness, it is he, Jaime Lannister, who wins the war.

 

* * *

 


	11. Flu

**Author** : AsbestosMouth

**Ship(s)** : Stannis/Davos. Woohoo! mentions of Shireen/Rickon.

**Trigger Warning(s) if applicable** : Stannis is melodramatic. Sooo melodramatic. But also TOOTH ROTTING FLUFF!

**Brief Summary** : Stannis has flu. He is convinced that death is near. Davos tried to convince him that he isn’t dying. It is all Brexit’s fault.

_Prompt by[@onehotsummer](https://tmblr.co/mZ6mHVFtSHQPqxb3lR-aJ3g):  stavos, h/c with severe cold or flu.  Oh wait, Stavos watching Brexit results!! and Davos voting Remain but NOT KNOWING how Stannis voted and thinking it MIGHT be leave but he doesn’t wanna ask then of course when Remain wins Stannis is manfully happy and Davos is like “PHEW”. _ Obviously Remain did not win, so I’m just using Brexit as an excuse for making Stannis ill. Otherwise this might be a less fluffy fic and more a :( fic.

 

* * *

 

Stannis is dying. **  
**

He is dying.

His head feels like a Dothraki army galloping across his frontal lobe, every muscle aches and whines and tells him he must die because it makes sense. Nausea? Check. Mucus? Double check. Phlegm? So much that he thinks something important internally must have sprung a leak. Slight hallucinations starring various members of his rugby team?

Oberyn Martell, wearing a mankini - and there is no way to bleach the haunting image from his head now, not even GIFs of kittens - waves cheerfully from the television, surrounded by purple, green, and sickly yellow lines. He then turns into a vacuum cleaner and Stannis realises that he is watching advertisements for the first time in years. The reason they have the Sky package that utilises hard drive technology and taping of programmes - and yes, he is perfectly aware his terminology is about fifteen years out of date - is so they do not have to witness any imbecilic fools trying to sell complete and utter rubbish via the screen.

He is too weak to pick up the remote control and fast forward.

He is dying.

Stannis snuffles, eyes red-rimmed and leaking, hunching into the blanket wrapped around his shoulders. He has a heat pad on the back of his neck. It is Shireen’s, and it is shaped like an elephant. The elephant wears a pink dress, and a hair ribbon.

He is fairly sure that unless they are very young, elephants do not possess hair upon their heads of sufficient quantity to merit wearing a hair ribbon.

“Tea?” A warm hand takes his temperature. “You’re due some paracetamol. Still running a bit feverish, Stannis.”  
  
“I am frozen,” he spits out.

“Let it go.” A faint smile, as if Seaworth has made a joke, but Stannis cannot tell. “You’re still feverish.”

“I am dying.”  
  
“You have the ‘flu.” Why is Davos so irritatingly calm in these situations where Stannis is dying? He never frets, he makes tea and brings soup that his partner lovingly hand-makes. Sometimes there are biscuits, soft ones, all chewy oats and golden syrup, which is soothing on his throat, and gives him the energy to remain vaguely awake.

“I am dying, Seaworth. I have written my last requests, and they are saved on the laptop.”

“Prat.” Indulgently.

“Where is Shireen? I wish to say my goodbyes while I still have breath in my body.”  
  
“Out on a date. Hopefully she won’t be infecting Rickon with-”

Stannis forgets, instantly, that he is near death’s door. He forgets the flu, the aches, the pains, the recent Brexit devastation which he is sure lowered his immune system to the point of failure. Davos’ indulgent coddling slips his mind, as does the fall of the pound against the Euro, and the woeful performance of the English football team in Euro 2016. Not that Stannis likes football; he is a rugby man, through and through. One must, however, support one’s country. Even if that country is falling apart at the seams and has, inadvertently, lead to his own demise.

“Get the car, Davos. We need to-”  
  
“Love, Shireen is sixteen. She is old enough to go on a date without a chaperone.”  
  
“But Rickon is a boy.” With genitalia, that could be too near his daughter at the current moment in time.  
  
“Yes. Yes he is.” Davos’ fingers card lightly through Stannis’ cropped hair. Since his baldness has become irrevocable, Seaworth clippers his head on a number one every two weeks. According to his partner, his very sleepy and ridiculous partner when the statement was stated, he feels like the softest mole in the hole when his head is shaved.

“With a propensity for using his penis to desecrate our daughter!” A nuzzle to the ear. Stannis glares. “Stop trying to distract me.”

“They have gone to see the new Finding Nemo film. They are going for a milkshake and a bite to eat afterwards. They have promised to be waiting for me to pick them up at 8pm exactly. There is nowhere they can go, or enough time, to have sex. Shireen is sensible, Stannis. You know that. You are the one that insisted upon thorough sex education. I kept finding pamphlets for weeks.”

“Rickon is a boy.”  
  
“Yes, he is. A very nice one, who brings Shireen out of her shell, and adores the ground she walks on. She keeps him grounded, and they suit each other. So I want you to settle down, have a nice cup of tea and some soup, a cuddle, and we’ll watch something on the telly. Then, after we have done all that, and you’re having a nap, I’ll go get the kids, run Rickon home, and bring our girl back so she can mock you further for having man flu.”  
  
“I. Am. Dying.” Gritted teeth. The effect is spoiled by having to blow his nose into a piece of kitchen roll covered with tiny cupcakes. They have run out of tissues.

“No you’re not.”

“Foolish smuggler.”  
  
Davos eases himself onto the arm of the chair, snuggling and loving and essentially the wonderful man he always is.

Stannis quietly rests his aching forehead against a comfortably denim-clad thigh. Even if he shall soon be dead, Davos still calms. Always has, always will, or, at least, for the short length of time that remains.

“I’ll put whisky in the tea?”  
  
“Yes please. I love you. Even if you do not realise that I shall not survive the night.”

“Love you, you melodramatic pillock.”

 

* * *

 


	12. Stolen

**Author** : AsbestosMouth  
****

**Ship(s)** : Tormund/Brienne, tiny hints of Jon/Sansa.  
****

**Trigger Warning(s) if applicable** : Sex. Frotting. Cunnilingus. Porny things. Actual porny things. Had to NSFW this one.  
****

**Brief Summary** : Tormund is everything that can be wrong with a man; vile, crude, disgusting. Attractive. Virile. Unlike anyone Brienne has seen before. She pretends she despises him. Tormund goes along with it, because at night-

Well. At night, everything is different.

_Prompt by a lovely Nonny Mouse: ****Prompt: Brienne pretends to be indifferent to Tormund’s advances, but it’s all just an act - she’s enamoured with him & they secretly meet up every night at Castle Black/Winterfell. One night, someone (Jon? Sansa? Pod? Edd? Davos?) walks in & catches the two of them in the act._

 

* * *

**  
**“Alright?” **  
**

Brienne averted her eyes, concentrating upon polishing the burgeoning rust from underneath the maille of her gauntlet. Just him being near made the tiny hairs upon the back of her neck prickle, uncomfortable, as if they understood her reticence.

Thick boots over melting snow, beaten thin by footfall, and he padded so close that she smelled sweat, musk, a greasiness of unwashed clothing.

Disgusting.

 

* * *

Mouth against her throat, hands upon her hips. They flex, helpless, as he grinds into her body. Brienne swears softly, eyelids tissue-thin fluttering with sensations never before endured. His pulse is as hers, a racing beast galloping to doom; chased, and hungered, and almost caught as her thigh presses hard between Tormund’s own.

“Fuck, woman,” he grunts, panting.

They aren’t even naked. They aren’t even near to undressed. The very front of his rough woollen breeches stains dark, and he laughs helplessly, rumbling and amused and not a trace of embarrassment.

“Fuck, I came in my bloody trousers.”

 

* * *

 

A wink, followed by a lightning-spark grin. Even Brienne admitted that Tormund had an excellent set of teeth; given that Wildlings rarely ate the rich sweet foods that caused decay, they tended towards excellent smiles.

Brienne, ignoring him as always, set her shoulders square, chin raised in rebuffal. Podrick, bringing her Oathkeeper and strapping the sword to her side with clumsy fingers, looked at her, then at the redheaded Wildling, eyebrows expressive.

“He is ridiculous,” Brienne said as she and her loyal squire patrolled the perimeter. Below them the Wall stretched for ever, and the snowdrifts built, and the cold threatened to destroy fingertips and noses. So many suffered frost nip, extremities black and painless. “He keeps looking at me, and I dislike him.”  
  
“Perhaps,” Podrick ventured, “he admires you?”  
  
Brienne snorted, her breath white crystals in a moment. “He is a filthy lecher, who, I am sure, is merely starved of female company and sees an opportunity. Unfortunately for Giantsbane,” and the distaste shimmers, silver-banded and green, “he seems unable to realise that he is looking for naught.”

 

* * *

 

Her thighs drape across his shoulders, endless expanses of white milk and cinnamon freckles, as he devours her.

His beard is soft, and teasing, and she finds her hands in his hair to urge him closer, because she is so very close to losing herself in the moment. Under his lips, and the faint suggestion of teeth, under the fingers piercing deep and his enthusiastic heated breath, she writhes and manages not to beg.

It is difficult not to beg. Not when-

A curling heat roils, low, almost frightening intensity and blazing destruction as it builds and builds and torments and rages. For a moment Brienne tries to pull back, tries to escape, but Tormund refuses to let her, refuses to allow her to escape bliss and breaking, and she shatters, shaking and almost silent as her climax ravages her nerve endings, destroys the synapses.

He doesn’t ask for anything in return, and when he kisses her, almost chaste, she tastes herself.

* * *

 

The bread incident plagued for far too long. Why Tormund thought eating in such a manner would be socially acceptable? Brienne could not understand why he lounged opposite her, in the cold sullen hall of the Castle, tearing the loaf in his mouth, wiping his fingers upon his thighs, never looking away from her as he did so.

Vile man, she thought, sipping her soup with a delicacy of southern manner even if she hungered. Even if Brienne was near to death from starvation, she knew she would eat her repast in the manner in which her father instilled; spoon tilting away, bowl tilting away. Sip from the side, not the front, of the spoon bowl. Allow it to cool, do not blow on it.

He tore another chunk of bread, and that was truly nauseating.

Sansa, understanding, spoke of Winterfell, and how she had missed Jon, and tiny delicate snippets of news. A lady like no other, Brienne decided, even more than her sainted mother. Stark resolve and honour, Tully sensibility, honed by life and deprivation to a dagger-point that could change the world.

Jon watched his sister silently, dark eyed and mournful, with a spark of hope that seemed endless; stardust and the truth of death.

 

* * *

 

She is taller than him, so he takes her lying upon the chill stone of the storage room. Brienne tells him that she is a maid, and he nods, warms her with his tongue and fingers, prepares her with a single-minded tenderness that is apparently a Wilding trait; no real man wishes his woman pain as they fuck. The act is mutually pleasurable for the Free Folk, and not just for breeding heirs on the bodies of the unwilling, the young, the as yet unprepared.

Such are his ministrations that when he is snug, deep in her, flesh to flesh, she feels nothing but a tightness, a faint stinging, a fullness that could be missed if he pulled away.

“Mine at fucking last,” he mutters, more to himself, kissing her shoulder. Worshipful. His tone is wondrous, and longing, and like that of a man who would wait centuries for such bliss. Tormund enjoys kissing. He is a sensual being; the sort who feasts, and fights, and fucks, as if the world is about to end. Which, Brienne reflects, almost out-of-body with sensation as he begins to move, is possibly true.

He does not take, but he gives. His fingers find that spot between her thighs, thumb circling, pressing, chuckling as her hips buck and her breath shortens to a stutter of desire. In all of the stories Brienne knows, of lords and ladies and wedding nights, they never tell of pleasure being shared. Just a blooded sheet, a triumphant celebration of maidenheads being lost, and marriages being consummated. Never lusty women, and hungry, adoring men who desire them even more than a babe to carry a name, or a political linking of families.

“I-” Her words fail. Tormund is above her, dominant, male and virile and taking that which should be so precious and given to some rich lord from the south. That she chooses to give to him, without interference from others, because this is Brienne’s choice.

She wants Tormund. She chose Tormund.

“Mine, woman. You’re mine.”  
  
“Yours,” and they both groan with it, with the depth and heat as he ruts, and Brienne arches her back, giving herself to Tormund, to the Wildling, to pleasure that no wife is supposed to feel. She is his woman, not his bride, and perhaps the wrongness of this, the difference of life expectation of a young noble-bred woman to what this is, makes the mating, the fucking, heated, tastier, more-

“We’ll put the rest of-”  
  
Brienne freezes as the door slams open, the mortar puffing from the crash of iron-bound oak, and Jon makes a noise like a tiny dying bird.

Sansa? Sansa covers her mouth, the light in her eyes dancing amused and Tully. She is taller than Jon, which strikes Brienne, for a moment, as hilarious in her horror. Her arm is tucked into his, silver-grey on flat Crow black, even if Lord Snow is no longer of the Night’s Watch.

Everything pauses, for long seconds, apart from the red-haired man atop her. He does not cease, his strong hips maintaining the canter of their fucking, and stares Jon straight in the eye. The pretty lad looks away, cheeks hectic. Dominance.

“Piss off, Snow, let me have my woman in peace.”  
  
His woman. The words taste oddly sweet. Someone proclaiming her, Brienne, as theirs. Proud, handsome, infuriatingly Wildling Tormund, who, she supposes in her daze as his fingers caress and tease and urge her towards that heat-meltingly frightening completion that he ekes from her body, is their King now. Is he the King Beyond the Wall?

She is fucking a King. Laughter bubbles, threatens, burns her neck an ugly red.

Jon and Sansa flee, mercifully closing the door behind them, and Tormund grins at her. He seems unmoved at being discovered.

“At least no other bastard’ll try and steal you, woman. I’d kill them if they tried. You’d kill ‘em if they tried.” He paused to kiss her, deep and lingering, his tongue tasting of ale, before he presses his forehead to hers. “Yours, I am. Yours. Give myself to you, because you’re the one that stole me without knowin’ you did.”

 

* * *

 


	13. Mid-Life Crisis

**Author** : AsbestosMouth  
 ****

**Ship(s)** : Beric/Ramsay *Dreadfort represent*  
 ****

**Trigger Warning(s) if applicable** : Ramsay is his own warning. You lot know how this ship goes down (messily, bloodily, with lots of whipping) I hope. This is for the what, five people out there, who like this sort of thing apart from me. No overt sex/BDSM etc. Hints of theoretical murder/suicide. Fluffy for what it is.  
 ****

**Brief Summary** : Beric is totally zen with being almost fifty, because Beric is totally zen with everything. Ramsay, fast approaching that fortieth birthday that looms ominously, really isn’t pleased with the thought of getting old. Set in the future _Mayflower/Try Hard_ universe.

I need a portmanteau for this ship. Bersay sounds like a town on the Outer Hebrides. Ramric sounds like a Croatian tennis player. Boltarrion, perhaps? Donton? No, that sounds like a cross between a wonton and Downton Abbey, and that’s wrong. Albeit crunchy.

Prompt by Lieutenant [@wynch](https://tmblr.co/mJXg-KJdtNHq8SIy9UR2jrw), second in command of our proud albeit totally crack ship :  _I was thinking about this today. late 30-something Ramsay realizes he’s getting old. Beric/Ramsay of course. ;D_

 

* * *

**  
**“I’m home,” calls Beric. **  
**

No answer. He pauses, lays the car keys on the side table, tilts his head to listen.

“Ramsay?”

Nothing.

Frowning now, he pads up the stairs, stepping over various mugs and plates that have accumulated because, after all these years, Ramsay is still an unrepentant slob, and puts his head around the bedroom door frame.

Staring at the ceiling, Ramsay spreads out over the king–sized mattress like a duvet, fingers tangling in the leather cuffs that are permanently attached to the headboard. He is naked from the waist up, but that is perfectly normal; all white and black and pale weirdness at his pupils. Scars from various bar brawls pepper his chest, and that self-inflicted accidental rugby injury wound, where he tried to bite Gregor Clegane and got himself instead, silvers his forearm. He looks like some sort of disturbed wet dream. The sort of nightmare/fantasy that only men who have taken massive head injuries might, in all honesty, find seriously attractive.

Luckily for Beric he fulfils the criteria. He is such a man.

“Evening Ramsay.”

“I’m old.” Ah. This again.

“You’re not even forty yet.”  
  
“I’m thirty nine. I’ll die soon.”  
  
Beric has almost ten years on Ramsay, and embraces his late forties with elan. His hair remains stubbornly red-gold, though cut shorter now since his job requires suit and tie on a daily basis, and he keeps himself fit enough. Not quite as muscled as when he played rugby, and slightly soft around the torso, but still, he’s looking fairly good for a man with intense scarring and a sadistic partner who destroys him with various instruments of torment on a weekly basis. He still gets eyed up on the street, especially in his work clothes - not that he tells Ramsay because his little psycho will go and hunt down those who dare stare with impunity, but he does get offers from various people from time to time. Varys says it is because no one fills a suit better than a man with rugby shoulders, and Beric retains his breadth admirably.

“You’re not going to die, Ramsay.” He settles onto the bed, pulls his jacket off and hooks it over the bedpost, undoes a cufflink, and offers his arm. Sharp white teeth are at his wrist in an instant, though they lack the usual shark-like strength.

“I’m fucked off with everything. Can’t even be arsed to chew on you. Fucking hell.”  
  
“You’re having a midlife crisis, as I told you yesterday, the day before, last week-.” He soothes, fusses, strokes Ramsay’s cheek. The man is still gorgeous in that pale and vicious way of his, even if silver blooms at his temples. Age, unlike Beric, has not softened Bolton. It has honed him further, into something like obsidian. Something sexier, and more devious. “It’s normal.”  
  
“Hate being normal. Fuck normal. Fuck you.” He twists, wriggling into Beric’s arms, burying his face into his shirt and biting at the fabric. “Gonna die, bitch.  You’ll be all alone with no one to whip the shit out of you then fuck you til you break.”  
  
“You’re not going anywhere.”

Teeth scratch through expensive cotton, finding a nipple with an unerring instinct honed through years of jumping Beric when he comes home.

“Have to take you with me, won’t I?”  
  
Beric smiles, because the words never scare him. They should, he knows that, but Ramsay never worries him - never has. Perhaps Thoros is right, and he is stark raving mad for not being nervous but, underneath everything, he has faith in the man. After all, they’d not be in their strange BDSM relationship if absolute trust was not involved, and they did not enter into their partnership lightly. “You can’t kill me, I’m unkillable, remember? Even standing on a landmine couldn’t bump me off. Murder will not work.”

“I can try.” He eyes the long scarred column of Beric’s throat, latches on like a leech, sucks a bruise that will need concealer to cover it up. “A tiny bit of murder? Just a tad?”  
  
“Why don’t you go and shoot people on the computer?”  
  
“Too old to play on fucking Call of Duty. Fucking geriatric.”

“You can tell them that you’ve slept with their grandmothers then?” he offers. With that Ramsay seems to perk, gleaming and twisted.

“Fucked ‘em, killed ‘em, flayed ‘em to tiny little pieces, and posted their fingers to them in a bag?”

“Charming as ever, aren’t you?”  
  
He is shoved back, Ramsay climbing on top and holding him down by his hair. “Mouthy bitch that you are.”  
  
“And you love it.”  
  
Ramsay does. No perfect little sub for him, no yessir, whatever you say sir. He loves Beric because of the curious protective streak that shields Ramsay from his Dad when required, and because he fights back. He taunts. He teases about Bolton’s lack of height, and how cute he is when he gets pissed off, and how adorable his tantrums are. His words drive Ramsay to more perfect acts of sadism, and since Beric is the biggest masochist this side of Essos, that suits them both fine, thank you very much.

Both are aware that they are quite fucked up. Both of them posit that since they are happy, and what they have has worked for so bloody long, the fucked upness doesn’t really matter one iota.

“I’m going to beat the shit out of you,” he murmurs, lips millimetres from Beric’s ear, breath hot and coffee-tinted. “Then you’re going to beg me to fuck you senseless as you bleed all prettily over the duvet cover. Then,” and he tastes the edge of the man’s jaw, sending swooping pleasure and thrilling eagerness across Beric’s synapses, “you’re going to make me a bacon sandwich while I go and bitch slap twelve year olds on the Westernet for being cocks.”

“See? If you were near death, you couldn’t do all of that.”

Teeth find his jugular, digging deep.

“You’d have dentures if you were old. You’re nowhere near having dentures; how could you bite me without your real teeth?”  
  
“I’ve been researching titanium ones so I can bite shit well into my eighties. Maybe get ones with a locking mechanism so I can attach myself to you whenever the hell I want.”

Beric sighs, martyred pretense, arms wrapping tight around Ramsay’s solid frame. For a moment they are still; tickling breath across the wetness on his throat in time with his own exhaling.

Peaceful. Rare in this house, even if Beric follows the word of R'hllor and meditates, and does those breathing exercises, and enjoys listening to improving self-help audiobooks with his headphones on. He nuzzles the dark hair, and, in that moment Ramsay Bolton - sadist, bastard, danger to society, a thousand other insulting epithets from those who find him wrong, and damaged, and really screwed up - is as zen as the man who, probably unfortunately, loves him.

 

* * *

 


	14. Wed

**Author** : AsbestosMouth

**Ship(s)** : Jaime/Brienne, mentions of Daenerys/Tyrion  
 ****

**Trigger Warning(s) if applicable** : FLUFFY LIKE A BUNNY OMG. 

**Brief Summary** : During the Long Night, Jaime and Brienne finally admitted their feelings, physically and emotionally, because constant fear of death is an excellent catalyst for these things. Now, on their wedding day, Brienne is having second thoughts. What is a man to do when their wife is being an idiot? Invade her room as she’s wearing her wedding gown and talk some sense into her, that’s what.

Canon compliant, and seriously sickeningly filled with fluffiness.

Prompt by **[@frozenviking](https://tmblr.co/mVhqW9Vjq-A1CCO0duQSiNw):**   **** _Post war living on Casterly Rock. Wedding jitters having set in for Brienne as she doesn’t think anyone will accept her given she’s no longer a maid. And she’s not beautiful. Jaime and Tyrion helps her calm down. Then head canon Jaime puts the red lannister cloak on her shoulders later._

_Hope it’s not too much? Kinda implied that they had sex during the long night as they both didn’t think they would survive._

 

* * *

 

The cold proved infectious, a creeping wetness of horror that dripped into bone and blackened flesh. Unrelenting. Endless. White blanketed, twisted grey by the Night, and in the south, almost to the borders of Dorne and into the desert, the people died. They died; rich, poor, old, young, and everyone in between. They died, and the cold ate their corpses, fuelled the Night, even if they did not rise like Walkers.

He held Brienne to his chest, trying to breathe life into her shaking fingers.

“We can’t have you losing a hand. Two between the two of us wouldn’t prove useful, wench.”  
  
“They refuse to bend.” She gritted her teeth, eyes wet and frustrated. Hopeless.

What hope could come when Winter ate, and the dragons were not yet here? Pretty little Jon Targaryen - and who saw that coming? - and his pact with the First of her Name. Dragons were promised, and dragons had not come.

“I am cold, Jaime.” Brienne did not complain, for this was ineffable fact. Her lips, greyish-blue, pressed tight closed. She looked like shit. But then, Jaime reflected, he did too. Sleeping in a bed? A distant memory, punctuated with feasting, and heat, and warmth. Wine. Laughter. The headiness of it all, of sunlight and life and Summer.

He fumbled messily at his leather tunic, toggles stiffened and cracked with wear and frost. Underneath lay wool and linen, and he shoved his shirts up, baring his belly, and then, taking Brienne’s wrist, he put her frozen hand upon his warmer flesh.

Her expression flickered, helplessly; shock, and embarrassment, and something darker, primal.

“Jaime, you’ll get cold.”

“And you’ll get warmer. We can be tepid together.” Finding her other hand curled awkwardly at her side, he laid it inside his clothing.

“They say that sharing body heat is the best way of staving off freezing to death.”  
  
“You could have always said that you wanted to fuck, wench.”  
  
Brienne drew herself to her considerable tallest, jaw stubborn and set. “Trust you to think of something like that, Lannister.”

“I,” and something stopped him, turned his words from a sharpness into a something else, a lingering caress of speech. It weighed over them. Death taunted every breath. In a moment, or an hour, or a day, they will be dead. It hit so hard, and so deep, that he could not do anything else but hold her. “I do not want to die without you, Brienne. I do not wish to go to the Warrior without- for the love of the Stranger, wench, I’m trying to tell you that I-”

Her hands slid, calluses rough over the thinness of skin, bumping muscle, before they caressed the small of his back. For a woman with strength and power, Brienne could be tender. After all, a lady born and bred could never quite shake away the trappings of her heritage, even if she fought and bled with her men, her armies, her King.

“I do not wish to die the Maid of Tarth, Jaime. I want, with you-”

He understood, as his arms tightened about her waist, about her leanness and tone and stringy glory, as he touched his forehead to her shoulder. Even if this was war - and they should die, because legend and glory and tales and myth demanded sacrifice, and who better than the Kingslayer who fought for the King and a warrior woman who bested the entire Seven Kingdoms with her honour - they would pass to the realm of the Gods together, as one flesh, because, after all of this, Jaime loved her with the simplicity of a man who loved a woman.

 

* * *

 

Gold is the colour of his hair, and red is the colour of his surcoat. Gold and red, and lions rampant across his chest, and the hand he wears as black as the Long Night.

“She is having second thoughts, brother.”

Tyrion leans against the balustrade. The Hand of the Queen wears the colours of her house, and Jaime admits, privately, that he seems to be far more proud of Targaryen than Lannister. To be expected, of course, given the past.

“Why?” He knows why. It is obvious. Jaime is a cripple, and a Lannister, and a disgrace to his father’s name. He is a hero, but a fallen one, a Kingslayer who lives due to his actions during the Long Night and because Daenerys Targaryen loves his brother. Loves Tyrion. She said, once - after they approached something like civil terms and Jaime explained why he slew the Mad King, and she murmured, with the strangest smile upon her lovely face, that Aegon reminded her of her dead brother - that Tyrion is the only one who has ever treated her as a person, a friend, a peer, and not as a chattel, Queen, or object of desire. Distrust growing to friendship, growing to love, and respect.

How similar he and Tyrion are in the ways of women.

Brienne is too good for Jaime. He knows that. She is everything that is knightly, whilst he, even in his armour, and once clad in the white cloak of the Kingsguard, and in his disgraced family name, is a broken damaged thing. She is kindness, generosity. She is young, and the most beautiful person he has known. She is leagues beyond him.  
  
“She’s fretting that she isn’t pretty enough for the Warden of the West. She stands there in her gown, picking at the seams, and worrying that she is nothing but a sow playing bride.” The Imp smiles, very fond. He loves his sister-to-be. “I tried speaking with her, but she is as stubborn a woman I have ever met, and that includes my Queen.”

“I have to talk with her.” How can she think such things?

“It is your wedding day, Jaime. Is that not bad luck?”  
  
“Where is she? I can yell through a door, can I not?”

 

* * *

 

“Wench?”  
  
“Jaime, what are you doing here?”  
  
The door, heavy and iron-bound, is thankfully ajar.

“You need to stop being ridiculous. Can you speak privately with me?”  
  
“I am wearing my wedding gown. It is bad luck to see me in it before we meet in the Sept.”  
  
“Fuck normality, Brienne. When have you or I ever been normal?”  
  
He hears footsteps, muffled in softness and not her usual long boots, before she looks about the edge of the door. Grave featured, and those brilliant blue eyes seem troubled, and of course Jaime touches her cheek with loving, warm fingers. “Talk with me, woman. Tell me what troubles you? I can close my eyes and not see your dress, if you want?”  
  
“I hate this dress,” and her mutter stabs bone deep.   
  
“Then don’t wear it.”  
  
“It is tradition.”  
  
“What did I tell you about us? You and I, we break tradition. You and I are a Kingslayer and the Maid of Tar-”  
  
“I am no maid. They. They’ll see, Jaime. When I don’t bleed tonight, when the sheets are not red in the morning. They’ll see I am not a maid, and that you have taken a tainted woman to wife.” Hollow. Hollow like a broken gourd. Acid sadness paints every word. Needing to hold her, he barges into the room. A maid squeaks, rushes at him, but he dodges neatly, pushes her from the chamber, locks the door firmly, and faces her.

The gown is silver, and trails behind her as she moves, and is utterly alien on Brienne’s fine strong body. Her back is too wide, her hips too boyish, the lower cut of the bodice emphasising what she does not possess. Tradition, and pomp, and ceremony; all designed to wrap a bride as a gift to a husband, a possession for him to own, in a pretty package of cloth and jewels.

“I hate that dress.” It spills easily, an odd sort of relief thrilling her freckled cheeks as his words. “I’ll not marry you if you wear that damned thing. You hate it, also, and I would not have you suffer upon this day. Wear your tunic, your armour, whatever you wish, but not that gown. You do not look yourself.”  
  
“But this is what a bride should wear.” She runs her fingers across glittering embroidery, the gems rough under her scarred hands. “This is what is beautiful.”  
  
“No. You are what is beautiful.” His hands find the lacings, tugging them from the eyelets. How can they corset Brienne? How can she be stuffed into something that is armour for a woman, not a knight? “I will not have you force yourself into what you hate, wench. All your life you have existed outside of boundaries. Why, today, must you torture yourself? Because of the Queen? She will not care, Brienne. She loves you as a sister. Fuck the nobility if they judge. Fuck everyone, woman. Why are you doing this to yourself?”

“You deserve someone better than I.”

“…but you are too good for me.”  
  
“Oh Jaime.” The gown, which weighs far too much for simple fabric and jewels, crumples to the floor. She picks it up, carefully folds it, lays it upon the bed. “Do you not see? You don’t, do you? You really don’t.”  
  
“Tell me. Make me see.”  
  
She looks fragile despite her strength, and so very young. “I am Brienne the Beauty; I am ugly. I am no maid, despite all who call me the Maid of Tarth. You are,” and for a moment she squeezes her eyes, wrinkles her battered nose. “You are Jaime Lannister, and you are so beautiful. You could have anyone, from anywhere. You’re charming and handsome, wealthy, powerful. You could pick anyone in the entire Kingdom, or Essos. You are a good man. And…if what occurred that night has tied you to me, then I am so very sorry. You must not think that because you and I were together that you are bound to marry me. I understand. We thought we would die, Jaime. We thought that we would die in the snow, and I just wanted. I just-”  
  
A bob of her throat, the scars livid. “I just wanted you, for a little moment.”  
  
“Brienne.” He catches her in his arms, tilts her dear face up as she tries to hide against his neck. “Stop this. Stop. I came here because Tyrion told me you were reconsidering. I understood. I thought you had finally come to your senses and realised that I am not worthy of you, wench. Here you are, all upright and noble, desperately trying to wriggle out of this because you think that I do not want this, and you are an idiot, woman. Have I told you that recently? You are a fool, and a stubborn idiot, and I love you. Even though I am far too old, too maimed, too cynical, and far too dishonourable. I am no good for you whatsoever. Yet, for some insane reason, you seem to love me back.”  
  
“I do. I love you, Jaime.”

“And I love you, wench. Then it is decided. We are or are not worthy of each other, and therefore we are destined to live together and argue about who is the less worthy. To be frank, others have wed for far more spurious reasons.”

“What of the dress.” Peering over his shoulder, eyebrows drawn, at the silvery mess upon the bed.  
  
“Wear what you wish.”

 

* * *

 

She carries Oathkeeper rather than any flowers, and her armour, the Queensguard white, glimmers in the dim candlelight of the private Sept.

Brienne is beautiful because she is herself. She strides up the aisle, confident, her gaze never leaving his own. Her maiden cloak, as sapphire as her eyes, her Isle, drapes velvet, flows like water with her movement.

No eyes judge. No one mocks. She is a knight, she is of the Queensguard. So many sitting here saw her courage, her heroism, her valiance. Starks. Lyanna Mormont. Sandor Clegane. Seaworth. Other names, of ancient houses and newer risen through valor and honour. Varys. Missandei and her eunuch. Podrick Payne, who attends Brienne even now; a squire risen to ser instead of a bridesmaid is far more suited to a knight who is a bride.

Payne is the one who takes the blue cloak, who goes onto his toes to kiss Brienne’s cheek.

Sansa Stark, heavy with child, dabs her Tully eyes with a black and yellow handkerchief.

The Lannister cloak is almost too small; most brides of the house are shorter. It covers Brienne adequately, lays across her armour, and Jaime needs his wife’s help to fasten the ornate pin.

Her fingers shake as much as his.

 

* * *

 

No bedding ceremony for knights. Brienne is honour, and sense, and still carries the sword that impaled the Night’s King. No one would dare to seize a hero of the Dawn, not when she is taller, stronger, and more skilled than them all.

They quietly make their way to the bedchamber, and her tension is palpable.

“Come here,” Jaime says, soft and loving, as their armour and clothing is finally removed. “Come here, wench. Brienne.” A pause as he drinks in her length, her breadth, the way her chest moves with each breath. Freckles, and milk-pale skin. She is splendid, and wonderful, and beautiful beyond worlds and words and measure. “My wife.”  
  
In the morning, much to the delight of the court of Daenerys Targaryen and the amusement of the ever-knowing Tyrion, there is maiden’s blood upon the fine linen sheets.

Jaime Lannister has a small cut to the heel of his hand.

 

* * *

 


	15. Expecto Patronum

**Author** : AsbestosMouth

**Ship(s)** : Sansa/Sandor. SANSAN FLUFF OMG! (and Remus/Severus because this is my HP OTP).  
 ****

**Trigger Warning(s) if applicable** : Fluff fluffity fluff fluff fluff. Mentions of dead!Ned. Creepy boggarts. Creepier Slytherins.  
 ****

**Brief Summary** : Sandor needs to be able to cast the Patronus charm to pass his higher level DADA NEWT wizarding exam, but he hasn’t got the requisite happy memory to get the spell to cast *sob*. Sansa wants to be able to properly play quidditch with her siblings in their back garden. So, they might as well help each other, right? 

Harry Potter/Game of Thrones crossover, set in the HP universe. It got…kind of long.

Prompt by a Nonny Mouse:  _sansan. GOTxHarry Potter au. Sandor will help Sansa with DADA spells if she teaches him some quidditch moves. or vice verse, whatever strikes your fancy. oh, and this will inevitably lead to some good ol fashion snogging. :) feel free to add in some GOT or HP cameos_

 

* * *

 

Professor Selmy set the worst tests. Sandor swore internally, stared at his textbook which seemed to make no sense whatsoever, before throwing it across the library. NEWTs threatened. Not that Clegane was academically minded in general, but he was usually very good at Defense Against the Dark Arts.

Casting a Patronus charm was proving very difficult indeed.

“Please don’t throw books, Clegane?” The Gryffindor prefect working diligently at the next table picked up the much abused copy of The Essential Guide to Defense Against the Dark Arts. “Or at least do it when you’re not in the library?”

Sodding Gryffindors. At least Lupin was alright. He didn’t mind Lupin. The others, well - fuck ‘em.

Maybe Lupin’d help? His fellow Hufflepuffs were as clueless as himself, and it didn’t help that Sandor was the best at Defense Against the Dark Arts in their entire house. When they needed any DADA tips, they came to him, carefully and hopefully, and he’d swear at them and tell them to piss off and leave him alone, but in the end such was Clegane’s loyalty to his fellow housemates that he always helped them. With bad grace, and a temper, but he was always reliable.

“Oi. Lupin?”  
  
“Clegane?” Golden eyes smiled, politely.  
  
“Patronus charm.”  
  
“Are you finding it a little tricky?”

“Yeah, If I don’t get the fucking thing sorted, then I’m screwed.”

Lupin, given that he spent most of his time with Black, who swore almost as much as Clegane, didn’t flinch at the language. “Have you got your happy memory?”  
  
That was the issue. That was the issue, right there. A truly happy memory, to give the Patronus the power it needed. Sandor tried to block out much of his pre-Hogwarts days, when Gregor cast the Cruciatus Curse that sent him fitting and twitching into the burning fireplace, or when his little sister died, or when he was alone and angry at the world because of everything that happened. Gregor, Slytherin to the last, tended to hang about with Rosier and Malfoy these days, had a best friend in Walden Macnair, and was at the very centre of the wrong crowd.

He’d seen the Dark Mark on his brother’s arm, the instant before Gregor punched him in the face.

“I’ve got a memory.” Skin melting, and fire instantly destroying the nerve endings in his cheek and temple, and Gregor’s low, hateful laughter as his little brother screamed and screamed. “Does it have to be happy?”  
  
Lupin turned, checked that Madam Pince wasn’t watching, before scooting his chair next to the big Hufflepuff. “I,” and his voice was very soft, very low. There was an odd looking bruise on the side of his neck, not really covered by his shirt collar and robes. Hah. Studious Remus Lupin didn’t seem the type to let someone give him a love bite. You learned something everyday. “I don’t use a happy memory, Clegane, but it is a powerful one. I experimented with several, and I find that the memory I use seems to work the best out of all of them. I don’t think it must be happy, just something that makes you feel emotional.”  
  
He wondered, curiously, what Lupin used. The boy always seemed small and a little frail, a little ill and tattered about the edges. He disappeared on a monthly basis, apparently for his health, so perhaps it was something to do with the nature of his sickness?

“Yeah. I’ve not got a happy memory.”

Lupin nodded, reached out for a moment, before curling his fingers back into his lap.

“If you need someone to really help you with this, Sansa is the best. She’s excellent at the Patronus charm, far better than I am. I’m sure she’d help, she’s very nice.” He paused for a moment, inhaling, and Clegane almost felt he was being examined. “And very pretty. James isn’t sure whether he fancies her or Lily Evans more, but Lily doesn’t come from a family stuffed full of Aurors so I think he’s more interested in her.”

The Starks. Gryffindors, and Aurors, and high up government types. Eddard Stark was one of the chief advisors to the Minister before he was killed by You-Know-Who.

No wonder Robb and Jon became Aurors. The fight against Voldemort proved personal for a lot of people these days.

Sansa, though. Lupin was right. Sansa really was pretty. Lovely long red hair, and a singing voice like a blackbird. Nice, and kind, and very sweet-natured. He spent half his time keeping that shit Joffrey Baratheon from trying to grope her. Clegane had a reputation for being a bit of a champion when it came to the girls. He never tried anything with them, intimidated boys who were too friendly, was generally a safe person to be around if needed.

A Death Eater if there ever was one, Baratheon. Horrible little fucker.

“I’ll ask her. Thanks. Uh. Hope you feel better, yeah? Also you might want to pull your collar up.” He touched his own neck, pointedly, and nodded.  
  
Lupin turned pink around the ears, but when he rubbed the tiny bruise, he looked rather soppy.

 

* * *

 

“I can help you.” She clutched her books in her arms. Of course Sansa was taking stupid numbers of OWLs. She really was too clever for her own good. “Of course I can, Sandor.”  
  
Not many people called him his first name. Sansa did, and Peter, but then he really was a strange boy. Much more Slytherin than he let on, was Pettigrew.  Malfoy, when he wanted something, because Lucius Malfoy thought everyone owed him the world just because he existed. Rosier, because Rosier just wanted to shag him. Rosier wanted to shag everyone. His fellow Hufflepuffs, who seemed to actually like him. Everyone else called him Clegane, or the Hound, because he was so doggedly determined about everything.

Especially Quidditch.

One of the finest Beaters in Hufflepuff history, they said. Gregor hated the fact that Sandor had the flying talent. There were even teams interested in him, for when he left Hogwarts at the end of summer term, and he was seriously considering joining Caerphilly Catapults. Almost as far away from Scotland as he could get in Britain, which appealed.

“Uh. Thanks.” He didn’t really know where to look. Sansa was tall, and elegant, and she wore her hair in a messy sort of bun with bits of hair falling around her face. Lily Evans, he thought, had nothing on Sansa. “Yeah.”  
  
“But,” she said, softly, “I would like something in return?”  
  
“Anything.” It spilled from his lips without thinking, and Clegane wondered if he could run away, drink gallons of fire whisky, and die quietly in a corner. Fuck’s sake!

“You’re ever so good at Quidditch, so I was wondering if you could teach me to fly? I can, a little, but everyone else in my family is so good, and I’d like to be able to keep up with them when we play in the back garden at home?”  
  
The thought of pretty Sansa Stark all muddy and windswept, little freckled nose grubby, was really quite adorable. She was adorable. The way she bit her lip and looked up at him with her big blue eyes.

“Yeah. Alright.” Anything for her. Absolutely anything.

 

* * *

 

The flying was fine. More than fine, until they were rudely interrupted. Sansa wore Muggle blue jeans even if she was pureblood witch, and a snuggly warm jumper, and Clegane just defaulted to his Quidditch robes. The chill of the winter air sent colour to her cheeks, and she was the most beautiful girl he’d ever seen in his life.

“No, hold it firmer than that.” He managed not to swear, which was really not in his nature, and she smiled. Smiled! Like sunshine, and cut grass, and long softly cool days by the loch at home. Minus the midges. “You’re goin’ to fall off. Look, like this.” He laid his massive hand over her far more refined one, squeezing. “Otherwise you’ll go flying off in a curve, rather than straight. Try and keep stable, and to turn drop your hip a little in the direction you want to go. Don’t grab at the shaft and turn.”  
  
They hovered, a safe three feet from the Quidditch pitch, and Sansa carefully hooked her knees into the stirrups.

“You’re very patient,” she said.

“Not with anyone, I’m not.” A pause, a realisation of what he said, and he tried to get back to being his usual gruff and grumpy self. “Not when you’ll get me through my fucking exams.”

Sansa looked at him.

He realised, belatedly, that his hand was still curled over hers.

So beautiful. The most beautiful thing he’d ever seen in his life. Prettier than Scotland, or Stranger, his old and grumpy Highland pony. More lovely than flying, and Quidditch, and fighting.

“Oh look, the Hound has a girlfriend,” someone called, and Rosier, redheaded bastard, wolf whistled. “Bit pretty for you, Stark, isn’t he? More my type. Why don’t you come and hold my hand, Sandy?”

Bastard. He hated Rosier, and by default Malfoy, and therefore he hated the entirety of Slytherin. Apart from Snape. Snape wasn’t bad, and he was great at Potions, and didn’t mind being asked stupid questions. They reacted to others asking to help the same way; frustration, snarling, but always there to assist because they loved Potions and DADA so very much. Brotherhood, Sandor supposed, of the ones doomed to be good at subjects.

Gregor grinned, and it didn’t meet his brother’s hating dead eyes.

“Fuck off, you cunts,” Sandor snarled, and Sansa, delicately, and he fell in love with her a bit for this, hexed Rosier’s face into that of a rather irate  platypus.  
  
They fled, after that, before seven angry Slytherins decided to take them out.

 

* * *

 

The Room of Requirement. He’d been there several times before, when he needed something to beat the shit out of with his fists and wand, but this time the chamber was quiet, and serene. A large locked and studded iron-bound box lay in the centre of the room, trembling every so often.

“It’s a Boggart,” Sansa explained. “Lupin helped me catch it for you. It will change into the one thing you fear the most, and you can practice casting your Patronus to protect yourself.”  
  
“He’s alright, is Lupin.” He’d have to get the bloke some chocolate. No one else was as addicted to chocolate as Remus Lupin.

“Severus seems to think so.” Blue eyes sparkled.

The bruise on Lupin’s neck, the fondness- “Him and Snape?”

“I think it’s quite sweet. No one else knows, so please don’t tell anyone? I know you wouldn’t, though, you’re not the sort of person to gossip. I found them holding hands and discussing the uses of aconite. Well, arguing, really, but they were still holding hands. Or fingertips, really. It was cute.”

The thought of Snape being called cute almost slayed him, laughter bubbling. “Snape? Fuck, he’s just Snape. He’d marry Potions if he could.”

“He’s got hidden depths.” She brandished her wand. “Are you ready? Shall I demonstrate?”  
  
“Yeah.”

“If you’d open the box when I’m ready?” Sansa made her way forward, gold and red tie neat around her pale neck, and squared her shoulders. “When you do this, you need to think of your most powerful memory. It can be happy, yes, but sometimes what we think of as the one that brings the most emotion can be quite horrid. It still works, if you use that, by the way. It doesn’t have to be pleasant.” For a moment her eyes lingered on his thick scarring. “It can be anything. There are two types of Patronus - corporeal, which is very uncommon, and incorporeal.”  
  
“You cast the corporeal one, don’t you?”  
  
She nodded, her hair copper and fire. “I do. Mine is a wolf.”  
  
Sandor snorted. Of course it was. Of course pretty and clever Sansa Stark cast the full Patronus. She’d settle for nothing less.

“Open the box.” He flipped the latches, and the lid swung open with a hideous crash. For a moment there was a lull, before the creature clambering from the chest. It flickered for a moment, whirling between forms, before it settled, finally, and the urge to scream rose unbidden and painful in his throat. Sansa’s father, headless but recognisable as Eddard Stark, slowly dripped across the short distance. She whined through her nose, squeezed her eyes closed very tightly, and almost whispered the words.

“Expecto Patronum!”

Clegane felt sick.  
  
Silver mist curled at the tip of her wand, twisting about her body for a moment, before the dire wolf pounced towards the boggart. In a moment it was all over, the creature retreating, and he slammed the chest tightly closed. The boggart screamed, muffled and raging.  
  
Sansa didn’t move. She seemed frozen in place, her eyes still tightly closed, and the wolf quietly faded into nothing.

“Shit. You okay?” Her fucking headless father. Her fucking father, who had been beheaded by fucking Voldemort. Clegane came to her side, fought the urge to pull her into a hug.  
  
“Yes. I’m sorry.” The breath she held finally left her body. “For that. I saw it happen. I was there when it happened. Sometimes when I sleep, it comes back.”  
  
Clegane frowned, then laid his hand upon her shoulder. “I’m sorry for what that cunt did, Sansa. I’ll fucking kill him for you.” And he would. To get her sparkle back, to get her singing, to get her not this frightened husk, he’d beat Voldemort to death with his bare hands.

“Thank you.” She touched his hand, wonderingly, then pasted on a fake smile. “Your turn.”

 

* * *

 

Of course it was fire. The panic spread, burning, the nerve endings now almost recovered but still damaged singing and screaming. He felt his body tense, hands tightening, and he wanted to run. Run far away. Hide. Hide from everything. This. Scars. Fire. Gregor.

Sansa drove it back with a Riddikulus charm.

“Think of your memory,” she urged. “Keep it in the front of your head, and when it comes towards you, think of nothing else but that.”

Failure bit, deep and aching. Five times he tried, and five times Sansa Stark saved him from the fire-pretense of the boggart.  
  
“It’s not fucking working,” he finally spat through his teeth. “Fuck’s sake! Fuck this shit.”

“Do you have any other mem-?”

“Do I like like the kind of bastard who’s got happy memories, girl?” Anger and embarrassment made him lose his temper. “All I’ve got is being burned. You know what that’s like? Seven fucking years old, and Gregor burns the shit out of my face. You know how he did it? Crucio, he said. Fucking Unforgivable curse by an eleven year old. First wand, and the first fucking thing he does is curse his little brother. I fell in the fire and this,” he ran nails down his cheek, catching in the ridges of tissue, “is my fucking life.”

“Sandor.”

“So I’m trying to cast a happy pretty patronus, with my fucking face, against the thing that put it there. Shit. Shit! Fuck this. Fucking hell, this is bullshit!”

He pulled back, about to storm away, when a hand caught his arm. “Sandor. Please?”  
  
Of course he halted, because Sansa asked nicely, and he glared at her through his long untidy hair.

“You need another memory,” she said, gently.

“Where the fuck am I going to get one from, girl?”

Her lips brushed the scars at his cheek, before gently pressing against his mouth. In the moment he almost pulled back, almost shoved this pretty girl with the lovely hair and freckled cheeks away, but his treacherous arms ended up around her slender waist and then they were kissing, sweetly, Sansa’s hands lying on his shoulders.

It was a lovely kiss. A lovely, beautiful, memorable thing, and when they finally broke Sansa was scarlet-cheeked and panting, wild-eyed, because apparently, it later turned out, Clegane was a very good kisser.

 

* * *

 

When she opened the box, and the boggart leapt forth, his patronus turned out to be a massive slobbering English Mastiff. No wonder he was the Hound, he thought, rubbing the back of his neck bashfully.

“That was brilliant, Sandor!” Sansa looked genuinely thrilled, beaming and beautiful.

He caught her around her waist, whirled her around so her plait danced, and then he kissed her again and again and again.

 

* * *

 

Lupin glanced up from his homework as Sansa tumbled onto the settee next to him.  
  
“You look happy.” He flared his nostrils. In his human form, the scents were duller, but still there. She smelled of wistfulness and kisses. Clegane. The faint hum of powerful magic. Lemons. Sansa was always lemons to him. Severus was aconite and bitter coffee. Sirius sex and cannabis. James grass stains and mud. Peter soft fur and leather.

“It worked. The boggart, I mean. Thank you for helping me with that. For telling me that he likes me.” She tucked stray locks of hair back behind her ears, eyes shining and soft.

“Oh, it’s nothing. If I can’t play matchmaker for someone I like every so often, what’s the fun in life?”

“How did you know Sandor fancies me?” She took his homework and his quill and altered a potion ingredient. Lupin, knowing better because he’d talked with Snape about this essay between bickering and repressed hand-holding - on Snape’s part, not his, because if Remus had his way there would be far more snogging involved in their relationship, and definitely lots of cuddling - stole it back and scribbled out what she wrote.

“Severus says thirteen of the shells works better than twelve. Stop correcting my Potions essays, you horror.”

“How did you know? About Sandor?”

Remus, caught in the eternal struggle between werewolf and man, blessed with an olfactory system that could just about scent emotion, merely smiled.

 

* * *

 


	16. Rebound

**Author** : AsbestosMouth  
 ****

**Ship(s)** : The Blackfish/Jon Connington.   
 ****

**Trigger Warning(s) if applicable** : Sexual situations on a first ‘date?’ Usual language. Rugby! Mentions of the AIDs crisis, yuppies, miners, fashion sense etc. Not NC17 as fade to black makes me happy.  
 ****

**Brief Summary** : The year? 1987. The scandal over Lyanna running off with Rhaegar is shaking the world of Westerosi rugby to the core. Jon Connington is understandably heartbroken because Targaryen should have run off with him. This pining is not good for team morale, so coach of Storm’s End rugby team, Barristan Selmy, bribes Brynden Tully to take Jon out somewhere nice to cheer him up. 

Shenanigans occur. Set in the _Try Hard/Mayflower_ universe. This one turned out massive as hell.

_Prompt by @majorlykira: ****Ok, I have a prompt if you’re amenable: JonCon/Blackfish, Modern Westeros AU (your Mayflower AU works.) First date._

 

* * *

 

“Brynden, Selmy wants you in his office.”

“Bloody hell, what’ve I done now?” 

The Blackfish looks up from scraping mud off his boots, scrubs a dirty hand across his eyes. He is thirty two years old, and retired from playing for half a decade, but helps coach Storm’s End rugby team and has a flair for talent spotting that few possess. When he, Selmy, and Tarth, get together, magical things happen. They’ve won the club championship three times in a row since they took over. They smashed their greatest rivals, Winterfell, in the league final to take home the silver cup that sits, engraved and overly shiny, in the now crammed full trophy cabinet.

Selwyn shrugs, all good natured. He has pen marks along his arms because Brienne still hasn’t learned that colouring in her Daddy is not as fun as colouring in the things drawn on the paper. Single fatherhood hasn’t broken him, even if the poor sod looks knackered all day and every day. Sometimes Tarth brings his little girl, who is an adorable five year old tyke who wants to play for her kingdom one day, to work. She wears a tiny rugby jersey in gold and black, and asks a million questions about things that no small child should know about.

Line outs. Conversions. The perfect angle for the front row to hit their opposition during the scrum. She gets stared at, and Selwyn grins, proud as hell, that he has her in his life. The scars of the car crash that took Galladon still run, pink and angry, across her cheek, but she has the prettiest eyes.

“He’s looking thoughtful, Bryn. Best gird your loins.”  
  
“Shit. He’s up to something.”

 

* * *

 

“Take a seat, Brynden.” Selmy, who isn’t that much older than him but exudes a fatherly air at all times, closes the door behind him. “I’ll get straight to the point.”  
  
“Really bloody ominous, Barristan.”  
  
“It’s not about rugby. Perhaps indirectly-” He trails off, pulls open his desk drawer, and brings out a bottle of Rayder ‘68. Pours two glasses. Doubles. They clink crystal, and down in one.

“You’re saying it’s not ominous, but you’re bringing out the good booze?” The whisky burns a trail down his throat, and for the umpteenth time he wonders how Selmy got to forty without being drowned by rampant seas of women trying to tie him down. The Blackfish has quietly flirted, because Barristan is one of those noble handsome men that he sometimes has a thing for, but nothing. It’s as if the bugger is a eunuch.

“Rhaegar.”

“Ah.”

Not that scandals involving rugby usually make the press, but when Rhaegar Targaryen, who is Selmy’s godson and the most beautiful man in Westeros, runs off with Lyanna Stark, who is the sort of strong woman that feminists adore, who is engaged to Robert Baratheon who is the joint owner of the biggest law firm in the Seven Kingdoms and raging manwhore, then these things tend to make the public a bit moist around the edges. “Yes. I need to ask you a favour.”  
  
“I’m not getting involved in it, Selmy. It’s all a load of shit. Rhaegar should keep his gilt-edged Targ cock to himself.

“They say it was prophesied, something about fire and ice and coming together as one to defeat the Winter,” Barristan sighs. “I need to start drug testing, especially bloody Targaryens. They have addictive natures. But this isn’t about rugby, or Rhaegar and his penchant for striking northern girls who’re far more masculine than himself-”  
  
“She’ll break him over her knee.” The Blackfish smirks, that gold tooth of his glinting. He cultivates a scruffy pirate air, even if he is from the Riverlands. “She’ll smash his pretty body and send him home with a grin on his pretty face.”

“Aye, she will.” Another shot of whisky for them each. “But this favour I’ve got to ask you, it’s quite a big one.”  
  
“Go on.” Good year, this Rayder.

“Connington’s heartbroken.”  
  
“Shit.”

“Last time I saw him, he was listening to David Bowie on his Walkman and getting spectacularly drunk in the rugby club.”  
  
“By the Seven. That’s really bad.”

“So you will take him out to dinner, and take his mind of things? Thank you.”  
  
The Blackfish stares at Selmy’s striking, caring face. “You what? That sounds like a date. A rebound date. You want me to take Jon Connington on a date and shag him to cheer him up?”

“I didn’t think about the intercourse, but if you think it for the best-” The bugger’s eyes twinkle. “He’s a nice lad, just a little passionate about it all. I’ve been told by others he’s quite handsome.”

If redheaded second rows were his thing, Jon Connington would be perfect. Broad, cheerful, a bit mad. Terrifying when angry, The Blackfish operates on a certain level of sarcastic grumpiness most days, but never deviates; what you experience is what you always get. Jon is lovely for long stretches to those he likes, then he gets pissed off, and explodes in a messy ginger display of sheer recklessness. He has been sent off twice this season for punching people in the face. Not that Brynden wouldn’t have done the same to Kevan Lannister, but making Benjen Stark bleed just annoyed the northern contingent. He’s only a kid, after all.

Selmy watches him, waiting, and the Blackfish waves his arms in frustration. “Fine. But you’re paying. I’m not doing it on my dragon.”

“Of course. We’ll put it through as expenses.

 

* * *

 

Fighting through crowds of yuppies, he manages to get to the restaurant almost on time. Thankfully no big heartbroken redhead waits mournfully, so Brynden grabs the table and settles, orders a pint of the heavy black stout he likes. Every other bugger is deep in wine, but the Blackfish has never been any other person.

Unlike other dates he’s been on, and haven’t they been successful, he gripes internally - one of nature’s supreme batchelors, mostly because he can be too prickly and dry for a lot of men - he’s nowhere near nervous. This isn’t a date. Neither of them are in dating mode. This is a favour to Selmy, and Connington’s far too upset over his silver prince to think about moving on.

“Evening.”

It is strange seeing Jon outside of the rugby field. On it he is glowing and magnificent, roaring orders, often with blood pouring from his nose and tape holding his ears down so they don’t get cauliflowered. Off the pitch he is tall and surprisingly well dressed in tan chinos and a chocolate brown shirt, a soft sweater across his shoulders. Autumn colours. Freckles. Several of the yuppies look over, eye him up and down with interest. Probably thinking what a smart-looking man like Jon is doing with a rumpled bearded lout in black who has the balls to drink beer in an elegant restaurant.

Stranger. Jon’s even wearing aviators, worn on his head like a girl’s headband. When the hell did Jon Connington get fashionable? Probably always. It’s not like the Blackfish sees him outside of rugby.

“Evening. Usual?”

“Shouldn’t we be drinking wine?” The corner of Jon’s mouth quirks slightly. He looks exhausted, and drawn, and shadowed under his pale blue eyes. “Do we have to drink wine?”

Brynden taps his Guinness with a slightly bitten nail. “Nope.”

“Fantastic. Posh place, this.” His vowels are very Stormlands compared to the almost flat nasality of Tully’s Riverland accent. Southerners.

“Food’s good. None of those little piddling portions either, none of that nouvelle cuisine bollocks.”

“We’re big boys. We need meat.” Jon grins, but it doesn’t quite reach his eyes.

 

* * *

 

Brynden Tully doesn’t scrub up nicely - he’s naturally just that bit rakish, a little untidy for that - but he cleans up interestingly enough. Dark wavy hair brushed back, natural rugby-player tan, stubble slightly too long, too obviously beard-like, to be fashionable. He is almost dangerous in a way, when that gold tooth flashes and he stretches his stocky form, alien in these smart surroundings. Others wear pastel shirts. Deck shoes. Rolex watches glinting on tropically-browned wrists. Streaked hair and perfect teeth.

The Blackfish, with his full tattoo sleeve of leaping trout in black ink, the Tully signet ring the one concession to fashion, looks more at home with one of those heavy metal bands than in an upmarket and classy eating establishment. He is dark, and saturnine, and crude.

He is very different to Rhaegar. No elegance, just a brutish strength and lazy grin. Hungry and human rather than a god-like beauty. He looks like a rugby player, with his bent nose and air of battered disassembly.

Tully likes men. Unashamedly so. He’s brought a boyfriend or two along to practice, once or twice. They tend to not stay around.

Brynden Tully is confident enough to be queer in a world where that bloody disease threatens to kill off people like them, when queerness still get them bashed in the street. It is twenty years since the legalisation of homosexuality, after all, but old habits run deep. The miner’s strike, with the gays and lesbians supporting the coal workers only happened in the last couple of years, giving them a voice however small and left-wing. This is 1987, where money and power rule, and people are supposed to conform to the desire of climbing slippery career ladders, of chasing success.

Jon watches the Blackfish eviscerate a very rare steak with strong hands commanding the cutlery, and downs his pint of lager.

Brynden Tully doesn’t seem like the sort to become attached if they have sex. If he invites this dark brooding man back to his flat and lets him screw every thought of Rhaegar out of his head, it will just be physical. They are grown ups. Adults.

“This is a date, isn’t it?” Testing the waters.

Very blue eyes meet his. Tully eyes. “Selmy wanted you out and about. Think he’s trying his hand at matchmaking the gays. He’s worried about you, mate. With all the Rhaegar stuff that’s happening.” He lays his fork down. “You’re a good man. A nutter, yes. Horrible temper on you. But, shit, you’re alright.”

“Not bad yourself, Fishy.”

Brynden stares, unamused, as Jon grins.

 

* * *

 

As it goes on, this not-date, it becomes, well, more date-ish. At least to Brynden. Jon is pleasant company. They talk rugby, and complain about current chart music being shit. Not enough angry guitar solos for Tully, not enough weirdness and Bowie for Connington. Family raises a spectral head. Cat is marrying Ned Stark, probably to breed an entire Winterfall XV because the northerners are more mad for rugby than any kingdom in Westeros, and they’ve both been invited to the wedding. It is easy to make a pact to sit with each other during the no-doubt painful day, the homosexual and the black fish of the Tully family, and they promise to get really drunk. They laugh, and it ends up rather raucous to the consternation of the yuppies who drink their expensive champagne and go and snort cocaine off the toilet seats every ten minutes. By pudding - the posh buggers here call it dessert, but it is bloody pudding - Connington has loosened up. Combination of the amount of lager he’s sinking and the good food, probably. He’s not at all bad looking, especially when he grins broadly and throws his head back to laugh. That hair is spectacular under the lights.

It’s alright, this. This is a better date than actual dates he’s been on.

A calf brushes against his, then presses a little more.

“Want to come back to mine?” Jon asks. He looks a little glazed, and a little worn, but there is a liveliness to him that belies how he entered the restaurant.

“Are you trying to seduce me, Connington?”

Jon runs his finger around the bowl before him, chasing the last remnants of ice cream, sucking the sticky sweetness from his skin. His eyes never leave Brynden’s.

Nice.

“No. I want you to come back to mine and fuck me through the mattress. No seduction necessary.”

The unspoken name flits between them.

Rebounding. Jon is rebounding, and the Blackfish is the nearest and safest thing he can shag.

Brynden’s fine with that. Just sex, this is. With a nice looking bloke who seems to want to be fucked. He can deal with that.

 

* * *

 

He is woken by a hand between his thighs and a glittering gold-toothed grin.

“Again?”

“You seriously think I’m letting you bugger off home without an encore, Jonny boy?”

Connington huffs a laugh. “You’re in my house, you knob.”

“Maybe I like your house. Maybe I’ll just stay here and you can have mine.”

The black tattoos flex, fish leaping, and Jon sucks a bruise where the ink drifts into that tanned neck.

“Shit. Out of condoms.”

“Under the sink in the bathroom.”

“How many packs of the bloody things do you have?” They are glued together, somewhat painfully, and Brynden grunts as they peel apart.

“Sometimes,” and Jon half-closes his eyes, smirking. “I treat myself to a posh wank.”

The Blackfish arches his eyebrows, as chill and unamused as he can be but Jon has come to know that as playfulness, before he crashes off the bed with the grace of a baby elephant and goes in search of contraceptives. He has an amazing backside.

Don’t think of Rhaegar. Don’t compare them.

It is impossible not to.

 

* * *

 

“That was fun.” He sits cross-legged, jeans on but unbuttoned, drinking coffee. Connington has one of those filter machines, so the Blackfish avails himself, basically using the entire pot in the biggest mug he could find.

Jon’s toes slide up the inside seam, teasing.

“Bloody hells, man. You’re just a slut, Connington.”

“Want to do it again?” Sleepy.  
  
“I’ve got coffee. I’ll do you again in half an hour when the caffeine kicks in.”   
  
“Not that.” There is a softness there, and he realises the redhead isn’t looking at him. No, Jon is watching his toes walk up and down the denim. “Going out. Having something to eat. Maybe coming back here again. Regularly, maybe?”

“The date shit, you mean?” He catches the muscled ankle, tendons cording as he tickles the freckled instep. Jon has so many freckles that Brynden has an urge to get a pen and play join the dots. Permanent marker obscenities on his arse, or something. Giant cocks, that sort of thing. “Mate. I’d not mind at all, but you’re a bit buggered up at the moment.”

His family, the ones that talk to him, always say that Brynden is kinder than his gruffness suggests. Kids love him. His nephew, before contact was severed, adored him. Edmure rode on his shoulders, and they played with the boy’s LEGO sets, and the Blackfish always came up with stories about knights, and princes, and tales of Tully heroes from a millennia before.

“Rhaegar’s gone.” Finally, someone says the name. The elephant in the room comes into focus, sharp and silvery and unfairly gorgeous, and the mood shifts to melancholy. Was bound to happen, given everything. “Seven hells, Bryn.”

“Bloody Targs.”

“I waited for him, you know? Faithfully for the most part. Isn’t that fucking ridiculous? Rhaegar’s not interested in me whatsoever. But still.” The shrug is fluid, pale skin shifting across curved muscular plains. Hurt puddles like rain after a sunshower. He has a decent set of shoulders on him, does Jon. “I’ve had my fair share of dirty sex, sure. Not so much these days, since-”

“We got to all be careful these days, Jonny.” Fuck AIDs.

“He’s gone, isn’t he?” Swallowing, voice thick and dark. “With Lyanna Stark. He’s not coming back.”

“C’mere.” They’ve not even kissed. They came back to Connington’s handsome flat and fucked, ravaged, destroyed with tongues and mouths, fingers and cocks, until they forgot their own names in pleasure.

The bed dips as the Blackfish swims up the bed, wraps that tattooed arm around Jon’s back, pulls him into his chest. Brynden is a little shorter, a little leaner, but Connington seems to like him taking charge. “He’s gone. I know you loved him. Shit, all of us love Rhaegar. He’s perfect. You know what they say - we’d all go queer for a Targ, unless you’re already queer for them in the first place. But he’s not like us, Jonny. He’s not human, he’s like David Bowie or something. From another planet, where they breed beautiful silver-haired babies that they beam down to Westeros in space ships. He’s something to admire and never touch, because you burn with it. Not like us? You, and me. We’re real.” The Blackfish isn’t known for his loquaciousness, but sometimes the mood hits him.

“You’re a lovely rebound.” Jon rests his head against Brynden’s shoulder, exhausted in body and soul. Baths are needed, and clean clothes. Something to eat. For the moment, though, they just lay together.

“I’ll keep rebounding you with my cock until you feel better,” he promises.

“Excuses excuses.” At least Tully’s words elicit a smile, a narrow slash of a thing bound tight with tiredness.

“What? You’re alright looking, you’re robust. Nice arse. You like being fucked and I like fucking you. You know about rugby and you drink like a Blackfish. We get on well enough. Even if you wear poncy sunglasses at night.”

“Fashion sense, Brynden. Not that you’ve ever possessed anything like it.”

“Black is best.”

“You look like an Iron Maiden reject.”

Brynden grins. “You say that like it’s a bad thing, yuppie. Better a Blackfish than a yuppie fish.”

Jon groans, hides his face in Tully’s chest.

What neither of them know, at this precise point in time, is that they’ll be hearing that pun - and others, the Blackfish has a perverse pun-love - for the rest of their lives.

Strange how these things work out, isn’t it?

 

* * *

 


	17. Hand

**Author** : AsbestosMouth

 **Ship(s)** : Daenerys/Tyrion

 **Trigger Warning(s) if applicable** : Fluffy >.>

 **Brief Summary** : Daenerys makes Tyrion her Hand of the Queen. The position brings with it an entire boatload of paperwork, which really, no sane person could ever enjoy. So, when his Queen decides she wants to chat, that’s perfectly fine with Tyrion. Then she asks if he loves her. 

Canon compliant but parts occur after the end of season 6.

Prompt by [@hardlyfatal](https://tmblr.co/mq0zZA0q2DyGGa4r3f307gA) -  **** _tyrion/dany, per favore!_

* * *

 **  
** “Tyrion?”

She looks tired as she stretches long white limbs, made paler by the midnight blue of her elegant Dothraki-influenced gown. Underneath she has always worn riding breeches, from the moment she became Khaleesi, and now, as she rides the great wyrm Drogon, they are made of tougher hide to protect her skin from roughened scale. As Tyrion once told her; she is every inch a Queen, if not looked at too closely. If one investigates further, peels back layers, they will see the beating heart of a Conqueror. Beautiful and tiny and pretty-pale she may be, but Daenerys Targaryen is more than her looks, her title, her ancestry.

“Yes?” He looks up from the stack of paperwork. Being named Hand of the Queen means having to deal with the blasted stuff. The temptation to take it to the dragon pit and have one of the scaly beasts burn it into tiny little pieces is, frankly, very compelling indeed.

“Shall I ask Missandei to help you?”  
  
“Oh, this? This tiny pile of nothing?” He pats the parchments, which are almost as tall as him if he stacks them together. “I think I might ask Viserion for his input.”

His Queen’s laugh is soft; with him, her smile always warms her rich purple eyes. It is strange to think that Varys also possesses the same coloured pupils, and he really must get around to prodding his favourite eunuch cum spymaster about his heritage some day.

“Is there anything interesting in those letters, or are they the usual?”  
  
“Oh, quite the usual. I barely read fiction these days, since the correspondence is far more entertaining.”

“You must pull the more amusing ones for me.”  
  
“I can stand upon the desk and read them in an overblown and oratory manner if you so wish?”

The smile again. Such a tiny thing, that smile, that is very rare to see these days, as the ships of Dorne nestle in the harbour and the Dothraki gather under their Khaleesi to ride the wooden horses across the sea to Westeros. Tyrion, who has a propensity towards the ridiculous borne from deflecting the abuse of others - far less joy for a bully if one mocks oneself before they can get a word in edgeways, of course - finds both power and pleasure in making Daenerys laugh.

“Perhaps later, my Hand. Come and sit with me?”  
  
Tyrion drops his quill, wipes ink-spattered fingers on a delicately damp and perfumed cloth, settles at the girl’s side. Her hair shimmers in the semi-dusk of the coolness of the Meereen palace; outside swelters, unforgiving, but this stone and tile citadel remains temperate and comfortable for all those within the walls.

“Wine?”  
  
“Do you have to ask?”

Daenerys presses pale fingertips to her pretty smile, and pours. She is Mother, after all.

“What shall we drink to?”  
  
“Oh. Victory, obviously. Dragons, definitely. Dorne, possibly, and Greyjoy defectors, if we must?”

“To them all.” Even her drinking is careful, almost staged. Everything she does, outside of her room and her tiny inner circle of advisors, is managed and acted to perfection. Only he, Varys, Missandei, and Grey Worm are aware of her youthful insecurities, the way she fumbles within while the world sees self-assured dominance and beauty beyond compare.

Looking like Daenerys Targaryen is a curse and a blessing. She is wanted, as a possession, a prize, a thing. She is so lovely that others are dazzled to the point where she can break them with just a dip of her silvery head, a promise in her fascinating purple eyes.

How would it be to be beautiful? he ponders. His entire life he has been surrounded by those who are glorious to behold. But, as Tyrion knows, as Daenerys knows to her advantage, looks can mask horror, and darkness, and madness. Cersei. Aerys, father of his Queen. A myriad of the handsome, marred with ugliness within.

“The pirate was asking after you.”  
  
“She is a fascinating woman.” Yara Greyjoy is a force of nature; strident, confident, very masculine nature.

“Her brother was a little shit when I met him at Winterfell. Very arch, and quite in love with Robb Stark of all people.” He sips his own wine, the warmth spreading through his gut and into his veins. The wine of the area is sweetened with honey, and pleasingly sticky upon his tongue. Not as delicious as an Arbour Gold, but then, nothing in the world approaches the complexity of good alcohol from the Reach.

“He looks so very fragile, as if a breeze could blow him to the sea.”  
  
Tyrion grins, suddenly. “You are collecting eunuchs.”  
  
“I like eunuchs.” Softly. “They are men who could never harm me as others wish.” The connotations of the words send a shudder into his spine. What hells has she been through, at the hands of her brother, then her barbarian husband who she grew to love, and then those who would use her title and body for their own ends?

“Your eunuchs love you, my Queen.” Even Greyjoy, who is silent and strange, parts of his body maimed or missing, who looks upon Daenerys with a frightened awe-struck wonder. Even Varys, who loves the Seven Kingdoms like it were a person, who seems incapable of true affection towards mere mortals. Even Grey Worm, who is slave no longer, but still bleeds like any other man, and bleeds for Daenerys.

“Do you love me, Tyrion?” She sounds achingly young, and something lurks below the words, like a fish below skipping mayflies upon a pond surface.

“Yes. Of course I love you.” He does. She is a conqueror, a leader, a beautiful woman, and so much more; it swills in his belly like the wine. He admires her, utterly. He respects her, completely.

In his past, he would have loved her for her prettiness, her manner. Now, the years have chipped Tyrion into something more than a man with a lust for lovely whores, into something less shallow. A greater person for suffering, he supposes.

Her eyes glimmer, amethyst and black. “You are the one person I can truly trust to talk to me as an equal, who tells me the utmost truth. Never do you bow and scrape, or fight for favour. Never do you ask for favour, or push an agenda that is not our own. Always you stand before me, and tell me what I need to hear, not what I think I should. You are a great and honourable man, Tyrion, and I love you for it.”

“Well, you did make me Hand of the Queen…” One of his crooked smiles, but she does not return the sentiment. She watches him, silently, as still as a carving of a Targaryen queen of centuries before.

Then. Then she moves, like velvet and silk, and water and fire. She snatches his square blunt hand in her own long fingers, presses her smooth cheek to his tanned salt-rough skin, before she gently kisses his palm. Daenerys burns; she burns, like flame and lava and the essence of dragon. The press of her mouth is a brand, that sears his flesh, his heart, his mind.

“I am yours,” he murmurs, unable to stop himself, as his fingers splay to touch the satin of her cheek.

“Be at my side, Tyrion. Never leave me?”

“I swear.” He pauses, amusement alive. “That was rather trite of me, and I apologise. Usually I would come up with something far more me, but since you keep kissing my hand, I am slightly at a loss for words.”  
  
“You? At a loss for words?” Her laughter is lovely, and genuine, and so very warm.

“Well, it isn’t every day that the Mother of Dragons manhandles me in such a manner. If you are not careful, I could grow to enjoy such misuse.”  
  
Daenerys rubs her cheek into his touch, eyes half-closed.

He never does leave her.

After everything; the war for the Throne and the death of Cersei by the loving and terrible hand of Jaime, the uncovering of the parentage of the pretty little bastard Jon Snow, the crowning of Yara as the Queen of the Iron Islands, the battle for Winter and the coming of the Dawn. After learning to fly a damnable dragon, for Viserion turns out to be his, and Rhaegal takes to Jon, and Drogon loves the Queen herself. After aunt and nephew carefully avoid marriage, though Daenerys names the King in the North her heir, pointing out that she will never bear a child and Snow - he refuses to be Targaryen, but any children will carry that name - needs to have a fertile wife to avoid succession crises.

After all of that, Tyrion stands at her side.

Upon the ring finger of her right hand she wears a simple dragonglass ring, which matches the one Tyrion wears upon a chain around his neck, tucked and concealed in his clothing.

He is her Hand, after all. Hands do not marry Queens.

Hands counsel Queens. They advise. They support.

They love.

* * *

 


	18. Love Song

**Author** : AsbestosMouth

 **Ship(s)** : SanSan, yay!

 **Trigger Warning(s) if applicable** : Fluffy >.> Harry Potter Universe (Marauders Era). Contains Snape/Lupin, a touch of Malfoy/Rosier, and mentions of character death.

 **Brief Summary:** Continuation of _[Expecto Patronum](http://asbestosmouth.tumblr.com/post/147417632683/tumblr-fic-expecto-patronum)_. It is 1980 - two years have passed. Sandor, involved with the Order of the Phoenix, is a beater for the Caerphilly Catapults, along with ‘Dangerous’ Dai Llewellyn. When his team mate decides they should go out in Cardiff because Sandor won’t let him play with the trebuchet, they end up in the student union, where Clegane reunites with someone he hasn’t seen for a very long time indeed.

I am so sorry this took so long to write, Nonny. I hope you feel better after your surgery <3 Title taken from the 1978 single _[Love Song](http://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DEPoYQHDi1HI&t=ZGJiNDE2M2UyNjBkNWU5YTI2MDBiMmE2OWMxMjY4ZTY4NGZiMjI1ZixZNUV3QVkwbA%3D%3D&b=t%3AdXpwc9CPLjfdix92ASZoBA&p=http%3A%2F%2Fasbestosmouth.tumblr.com%2Fpost%2F148497276238%2Ftumblr-fic-love-song&m=1)_ , by The Damned. Caerphilly Castle really does have a trebuchet. And a leaning tower. And the Sex Pistols were banned from Caerphilly.

 **Prompt by a Nonny Mouse** _\- If you’re still open for prompts, I’d like to put in a request if that’s all right. You write so wonderfully. My request is anything SanSan, preferably with lots of kissing and maybe some sexual tension? I LOVED your Harry Potter Tumblr fic so maybe more in that verse? Just something to make me feel better as I’m recovering from surgery. I hope you have a wonderful day! :)_

 

* * *

 

Sandor paused from stripping his broom down, eyes narrowed. He’d taken a bludger to the tail, and most of the twigs needed straightening out, resetting, or completely replacing altogether. Perhaps it was time for a new broom? He had an eye on a Nimbus 1000 since his old Tinderblast dated to the second Muggle World War, to the time of Grindelwald, and even if the old thing was resilient - and had to be given it carried Clegane’s weight and height on a daily basis - it wasn’t fast enough to compete.

“What you want, Llewellyn?”

Dai grinned, broad and shameless. That was never a good thing. He was up to something.

“Dai? What the fuck you want?” Sandor’s language had deteriorated since he left Hogwarts, and it wasn’t the fault of his Quidditch team.  
  
“Want to play with the trebuchet?”  
  
“You what?” Caerphilly Castle, both a medieval fortress and the Quidditch pitch situated right in the middle of the coal-mining town it dominated, sported a range of siege engines. Apparently Muggles loved that sort of stuff. Every so often they’d end up firing rocks into the moat, scaring fish, the ducks, and probably weird Welshmen skinny dipping. Quite often, that turned out to be Dai himself, the idiot.  
  
“The trebuchet. Want to fire it at me and I can dodge the rocks? Or ‘it ‘em? I can ‘it ‘em! That’d be tidy.”

“You’re a mad bastard, Llewellyn.”  
  
The big sandy-haired wizard grinned, manically. They made a formidable beating team, him and Sandor. Clegane had more brute strength, but Dai? They called him Dangerous for a reason. More like bloody lunatic. The last match of the previous season, which was Sandor’s rookie year with the Caerphilly Catapults, saw Llewellyn fling himself from his broomstick in an attempt to stop Ludo Bagman scoring, and, obviously, since it was Dai doing so, failing miserably. Luckily he only broke his nose colliding with a mistimed Quaffle. Two years previously he’d been attacked by a marauding pike. Caerphilly had part of the pitch over the castle moat, and the magic affected the animal life skulking in the dim waters.

“C’mon! Why’ve the Muggles left it there if they don’t want us ‘avin’ a go?”  
  
“Fuck’s sake, Dai!”

Llewellyn bounced on his toes. “What ‘arm can it do?”  
  
“Apart from missing and knocking a bastard fucking hole in the side of the castle?” Or injuring his team mate, but that was a normal occurrence. Dai was accident prone, mostly because he was a lunatic.

“We can rebuild it. We ‘ave the technology.”  
  
“…you’ve been watching Muggle telly again, haven’t you?”  
  
“I love Muggle telly.” Dai flopped down, bumping Sandor with a well built shoulder. “Live a little, Sandy?”  
  
“Yeah. Because Death Eaters on our arses, people being killed, all that shit, isn’t exciting enough? So you want me to shoot at you with a trebuchet? Helga on a hedgehog, you twat.”  
  
“Alright. Let’s go down Cardiff instead. Some of the Gryffindors are goin’ to see some punk Muggle band. Not the Pistols, one I don’t know that good, but nice and shouty! You think think that Johnny Rotten’s a wizard? Did you know the Sex Pistols got banned from playin’ Caerphilly in 1975 or somethin’?”

 

* * *

 

The student union was very full of people wearing tartan and Doc Martens, and Sandor, who prefered all black with his army surplus boots, looked rather menacing compared to the bouncy academic types who played at being weekend punks. There were a few who were proper ones, who had safety pins through their eyebrows and who embraced the whole anarchist spirit, but mostly they were just normal kids on a night out. Some even looked a bit more New Romantic or gothic than punk.

Sandor missed the ‘70s. Proper music back then. 1980 was turning out shit.

“Drink?” Lupin smiled wanly next to him. He looked ill, a bit fragile.

“I’ll get ‘em.”

“I’ll have a lemonade then, please. Thanks, Sandor. Sansa says she’ll be here soon, by the way.” Yellow eyes considered him, affably.  
  
“Sansa’s coming?” He almost spat beer across the room. Sansa? In her dresses and her lovely long red hair, here? In a grubby student union in Cardiff?  
  
“She’s,” and Lupin looked a little embarrassed, “keeping an eye on me. Mediwitches, you know?”

Sandor looked around the room, before leaning in. “You look fucking awful, Moony. It’s all going alright?”  
  
The Order was something that Clegane hadn’t meant to become involved in, but since he was so good at Defense Against the Dark Arts, and aggressively anti-Death Eater given Gregor’s embracing of the plans of Lord Voldemort - and yes, he said the bastard’s name, mostly in the middle of a sentence made of very hardcore swearing - and then Remus recommended him as a member, he ended up working alongside the Stark brothers, the Marauders, and others loyal to Dumbledore.

It was nice, in a way. Not the deaths, or the loss of friends, or the fear of the Death Eaters winning. No. That was shit. Seriously shit. The other bits though. The being a family, with those who respected him, even if they didn’t like him. Based in Wales, and being quietly famous as the Hound of the Catapults - who never surrendered and was absolutely loyal to his team, doggedly determined in every match, and a perfect sullen foil to Dai’s madness - he was quite well placed to hear rumour.

“Time of the month,” Remus sighed. “It takes it out of me, but I couldn’t not come to see The Damned. Not when-”  
  
They might be killed the next day. They might be driven mad, under Cruciatus. They might lose the war, be imprisoned in Azkaban, or given the Dementor’s Kiss. Or worse.

Imperius, and Voldemort, and living in puppetry as the Dog of the Dark Lord.

“Snape around?” He wondered what Remus meant by his time of the month comment. Joke, probably. Lupin had a sense of humour, a bit dark sometimes, but it tended towards the gently surreal.

  
“He went to find cigarettes.” Sipping his lemonade. “He’s got quite a habit at the moment. He’ll only smoke Gauloises, which is incredibly pretentious, but-” He shrugged.  
  
“Understandable. Smoking, not poncy French fags.”  
  
Lupin nodded. His amber eyes looked a little dull, a little lifeless, and his smile tended towards the exhausted. He looked like he needed a whole bottle of Pepper-Up Potion and twenty four hours of uninterrupted sleep.

“You pass on what Gregor said?” Order business, easily concealed in a raucous punk gig.  
  
“The Longbottoms are on the case.”  
  
“Fuck, hasn’t Alice just had a kid or some shit?”  
  
“Two months, yes. Everyone sprogged at the same time, which is nice, really. Her and Lily’ve been swapping knitting patterns.” A fond look overcame Remus, though strain still showed. “At least there are bright spots in the shitshow that is the war. Two little boys to carry on the names of Potter and Longbottom.”

“Broody, eh?” Sandor nudged him, and Lupin chuckled. They’d become quite good friends since leaving school, mostly because he, Lupin, and Snape formed a little band of outcasts. The popular blokes like Sirius Black and the Stark boys got on with the task of being heroic, and their little trio worked quietly at the edges of things, a little darker, a little less perfect. Or a whole lot less perfect, really. Sandor was pretty sure Snape was some sort of spy, and Remus wasn’t quite human because those yellow eyes were freaky - cool, but freaky - but since he himself was Dumbledore’s Dog, he kept his mouth shut and let everyone get on with it. If Remus wanted to play human, and Snape wanted to be some sort of James bloody Bond, though with less shagging and more nefariousness, all fine with him.

Albus, the wily bastard, knew what was what, after all.

 

* * *

 

“Sansa, you came.” A hug between Gryffindors, and Sandor didn’t feel jealous. Not that much. Maybe a bit.  
  
“You look tired, Remus,” she said, gently. As expected, Sansa Stark stood out amongst the grimy and the punky, and looked awfully pretty. Her hair, and Sandor loved her hair, was knotted up in some sort of untidy bun, and she wore jeans and a blue-green top that made her wide eyes glow. Just normal clothes, yes, but the way she wore them was like she was a model, or an artist’s muse, or something. “Are you going to be alright? It’s very loud in here-”  
  
She paused, lips parting, before she beamed. For a moment Sandor looked around wildly, wondering who she’d seen, before realising that beautiful smile was for him.

“Sansa.” He wanted to kiss her.  
  
“Sandor? What’re you doing here?”  
  
“Uh. Friend of mine said we should - ach, bollocks, he’s just headbutted someone.” Dai threw a thumbs up, nose bleeding, and waded back into the heaving mass of pogoing twenty somethings.

“Is that Dangerous Dai Llewellyn?” she asked, curiously.

“Aye.”  
  
“We use his medical notes to research concussion,” she said. “Him and Beric Dondarrion, who plays for Montrose. But then he’s died six times, so slightly different.”  
  
“Only thing’ll kill that bastard is himself. Beric’s a zombie or some shit by now.”

They stood in silence, Sandor just re-memorising her eyes, and hair, and the little spray of freckles across her nose. Remus pretended to pay attention to counting the Muggle coins in his wallet.

Her hand moved, like through water, and rested on his arm.

Sansa Stark was touching him. Oh by the fucking Founders, Sansa Stark had her hand - bare hand, skin and everything - on his arm, which was also bare skin and everything. Sure, they’d snogged before. A lot. But as these things do, Sandor left school before she did because she was a couple of years younger, and they wrote a few times, and then he became friendly with the Stark brothers so it got a bit awkward, and what they had fizzled out. Sandor, being him, never stopped liking her very much indeed. Even after two years of not seeing her, the feelings remained.

“How can people dance to this music?” she asked, frowning as the melee boiled before them.  
  
“They’re pogoing. Jumping up and down on the spot.” He almost demonstrated, but realised how much of a tit he’d look.  
  
“Muggles are quite strange.”  
  
“Aye.”

“Oh. Sorry, you two. Severus wants me,” Lupin announced, though with a quick glance Clegane couldn’t see their taciturn colleague. “I’ll be back in a bit.” He smiled, oddly, before carefully starting to pick his way around the outside of the dancefloor. On stage, Captain Sensible looked bored and Rat Scabies smashed the shit out of his drum kit.

“Not your thing?” Sansa smiled up at him.  
  
“Not heavy enough for me. Give me Sabbath or Maiden any day. You?”  
  
“Um, Adam Ant is as racy as I get?” She laughed, all silver and birdsong. “I was brought up on ‘50s and ‘60s music. Mum loved Motown.” For a moment her expression darkened, painfully, and Sandor put an arm around her slim waist.

“Sorry about your Mum.”  
  
“At least she didn’t suffer.”

The arm around her waist turned into a hug very quickly, as Sansa laid her head on his chest, over his heart that thudded far too quickly, and he put his beer down to cuddle her into his warm body. Cat Stark had been killed by Rosier. Revenge, everyone knew, for the Stark brothers interfering rather too deeply in the affairs of Lucius Malfoy. At least Rosier was dead. Robb and Mad-Eye took him down, like the ginger bastard he was. Malfoy was in bits, Snape reported back. Absolutely shattered with it all. Not right though, Lucius carrying on with Evan, with Narcissa having Draco.

“We’re gonna win, Sansa. Promise. I’ll fucking kill the cunt myself, like I promised before. I’ll do whatever the fuck it takes.”  
  
“You’re so good to me.” Softly.

 

* * *

 

Severus eschewed the crowds, curling into a small sticky booth in a dark forsaken corner. From his vantage point he could survey the surroundings, ever watchful for signs of trouble. That absolute cretin Llewellyn had his tongue down the throat of what could charitably be called a right slapper, and he shuddered to think where the Quidditch player’s hand was.

“Severus.”  
  
“Sit before you fall over.” Acidly. “I was going to return, though you obviously thought yourself abandoned in the middle of this Muggle debauchery.”  
  
“You find it fascinating, Severus,” Remus pointed out. “You’re a people watcher. I bet you’ve been in the heads of most of the room by now.”  
  
He glared at his werewolf, who knew him far too well.” There are two other magic users here, apart from that ignoramus from Gryffindor.” Indicating Dai.  
  
“Sansa is here, like she promised us, and so is Sandor. He was apparently dragged here by Llewellyn.” He placed a large glass of very red wine on the grubby table, and Snape snatched it up, sneering, taking a long gulp before lighting one of his French cigarettes.

“Why you insisted I accompany you, I do not even know.”  
  
“Because I like this music.” Evenly. “I go with you to your classical concerts, even if I have no idea what’s going on, because I like going places with you. Even if you do bitch constantly about tuba players. Anyway, I left Sandor and Sansa to hate the music and be awkward at each other. I hope they finally remember why they started going out.” He sighed, resting his elbows on the table.

“You are manipulative, Lupin. Disgustingly so.”  
  
“I just want my friends to be happy. Like I am. With you. Even if you’re a bastard.”

Snape gritted his teeth and attempted not to look smug.

He almost succeeded, but the problem with Lupin being a werewolf included impressive olfactory systems and an ability to understand body language.

 

* * *

 

“Want a drink?” he offered, arm still tight around Sansa’s waist. The first part of the set had ended, so everyone was rushing headlong at the bar. Keeping her from being trampled was a first priority, and he turned her so she was protected by his big body.

“I’m fine, thanks. Sandor?”  
  
“Yeah?” Glaring at a drunk who dared to brush too close to Sansa.

“I missed you.” Her voice was so tiny, and so trembling. “I missed you a lot.”  
  
“Shit, I-”  
  
Sansa went up on her toes, and kissed him gently on the cheek. On his scars. She’d always done that, before they snogged. She said once that it was to show Sandor that she liked every bit of him, not just the undamaged parts. He was covered in old wounds, and usually bruised beyond belief, and just battered. Like a cuddly battered teddy bear, she’d murmured against his chest one evening, in the Astronomy Tower, mostly asleep. He’d queried, and Sansa said he made her feel safe and warm, and that she could just wrap her arms around him and feel comforted against whatever the world threw at them.

“It’s hard talking here.”

“We can go somewhere quiet, if you want?”  
  
“What about Dai?”  
  
“He’ll go home with a woman. Always does.”  
  
Sansa paused. “Do you?”  
  
His heart hammered painfully against his ribs. “Never. They’re not you.”

 

* * *

 

“Incoming,” Severus snipped. “They are, for your information Lupin, since it is frightfully important to you, holding hands.”  
  
“Good.”  
  
“We’re off,” Clegane rumbled. His and Sansa’s fingers were laced together.

“So are we. Lupin, we are leaving.”  
  
“But the second set-?”  
  
“Now.” Severus was quite aware of what his voice did to the werewolf; after all, Remus enjoyed being talked at in bed, shivering and panting as Snape whispered in his ear. Being a Legilimens meant delving into Lupin’s mind, finding every little piece of filth living therein, and purring it back from Severus’ point of view. Despite his reputation as cold and indifferent, he was worried about his partner, more than others could ever realise. Remus was suffering still, the aconite potion not quite perfected, and he still spent his full moons in agony. Unfortunately, he also spent them entirely lucid. It was enough to make the healthiest of werewolves run mad, let alone Remus, who was never completely well.

“Yes, Severus. Probably for the best. It has been a long few days. Be careful, you two. If you need anything, you know where we are.” Sansa would be a pretty prize for the Death Eaters.

“Thank you, Remus.” Sansa kissed the werewolf’s cheek.

 

* * *

 

“This is the castle,” he said. “We play over it and the lake, obviously the Muggles can’t see anything, but it’s quite a challenge. See the leaning tower? Some stupid bastard crashed into it during the Muggle English Civil War, so we blamed it on a cannonball so the Muggles didn’t start fucking hunting and burning us again.”

His words tightened in his throat, because every time Sandor looked at the wonky stonework, he felt that fucking curse, the lick of flame on his cheek, and Gregor’s semi-broken voice screeching laughter.

“It’s a very big castle.” They sat on the grass, in the courtyard, in the blessed silence. The thick walls muffled the intermittent traffic noise, and from where they were, the sky above them was a riot of stars, black midnight, and the Milky Way. Pretty, really. Not as pretty as Sansa, but nothing ever was. She was, Sandor knew without a doubt, the most beautiful person he’d ever met.

“Second biggest of its type in Europe.”

She sighed, eyes closing, leaning her head against his shoulder. “I missed you, Sandor. A lot.”  
  
“I missed you. I’m sorry I wasn’t there. When your Mum-”  
  
“Robb says you work with him.”

“Yeah. I work with him.”  
  
Her hair smelled of that lemon shampoo she always loved, and Sandor couldn’t resist running the back of his hand along the long shining tress that escaped from that bun.

“I’ve been asked to help.”  
  
“With the Order?”  
  
A nod.

“Shit, Sansa. That’s fucking dangerous!”  
  
“I was the best at Defense Against the Dark Arts in my year,” she pointed out. “I am a mediwitch in training. I have uses, Sandor. I can’t just sit idle at home when people I love are out risking their lives. I can’t just watch when the people who killed my parents are still out there. I can’t. I just have to do something. Robb and Jon are so brave, being Aurors, being part of the Order. But it isn’t just for them, not really. I just couldn’t sit around and watch you all being killed, not if I can help. I couldn’t stand it if you were-”

Sansa looked pale and determined, starlight in her bright blue eyes, and he couldn’t help brush his fingers along the curve of her jaw. Her skin was soft and smooth, like beaten cream. As soft as her hair, and her lips as he pressed his own rough scarred mouth against hers, as soft as her sigh against his tongue. The chasteness of it all, the reverence, was gone in a moment. Sandor found himself pressing Sansa onto her back, and her letting him, all the time kissing. Her hand found his ruined cheek, tracing the ridges, and he couldn’t help groan.

“Gods, you’re fucking lovely.”

“I missed you so much, Sandor.”

Another kiss, then another. Sansa wrapped her arms around him, and Sandor was careful not to squash her slenderness with his muscular bulk. In a moment he twisted, and then she was atop him, so she wasn’t being damaged, Clegane panting helplessly under her. Of course that meant she lay against his hips, and just kissing her turned him into a bit of a slathering beast, and he tried to bury his arse down so she wasn’t being prodded, but she smiled against his cheek, settled her head under his jaw, not seeing to care that Sandor was hard against her stomach.

“Sorry.”  
  
“Don’t be. I-I don’t mind.”

They’d never slept together. The time wasn’t right, and they were both busy at school, and then Sandor left for the Catapults after his final exams. Lots of kissing, gentle touching that drove Clegane mad with it, to the point where he became intimately acquainted with the Quidditch showers to try and cool himself down. To be honest it had been himself who was scared of going further. Sansa was so beautiful that part of him wondered what the hell would happen if they did have sex. Probably he’d be terrified, he’d go soft, the moment would pass, she’d be upset and think she wasn’t gorgeous or sexy enough, he’d get a complex, she’d end up going out with someone worthy of her, and it’d all end sadly.

“I thought about it. Sleeping with you.” There was a reason Sansa was a Gryffindor. Brave, he knew. Braver than even her family saw. After all, she wasn’t an Auror, and yet, she was stepping up to help the Order. Neither was Clegane. Lupin. Snape. She was like them; a bit outside of the main core of Dumbledore’s little family. Different. Different in a good way. “About sex.”  
  
“Fuck, Sansa.”

“I wanted to, you see? I wanted to just go to bed with you, and have sex. Lots of sex. With you.”

His mouth silenced her, words swallowed up as he kissed her again. If he had been aroused before, it was nothing compared to the white-hot lust blazing in his veins. Sansa Stark thought about sex with him. Sansa Stark, the most beautiful girl in Hogwarts, even more than Lily Evans, and Bella Lestrange, wanted to sleep with him. She tasted of sweetness, Coke or something, and a clean citrus freshness that always seemed to embody her. Her hands found his hair, tugging lightly, making Sandor moan into the kissing.

Fuck.

“Want to come back to mine?” Sandor managed to get out. “Uh. Coffee?”  
  
Her eyes were tranquil like the castle moat; calm on the surface, with raging depths. “Take me home with you, Sandor? Take me to bed?”

Fuck!

He scrambled to his feet, lifting her in his arms as he went. Sansa blinked, smiled with a shyness that looked bloody perfect on her, legs around his waist.

“Hold on,” he murmured. “Hold on tight.”  
  
The only thing that could be heard that night, from within the great stone walls, was the unmistakable crack of side-by-side apparition.

 

* * *

 

 


	19. Pride and Prejudice (First Impressions)

**Author** : AsbestosMouth

**Ship(s)** : Rickeen! Stavos in the background!

**Trigger Warning(s) if applicable** : Fluffy Modern AU. First meetings.

**Brief Summary:** First impressions can be deceiving, especially when teenagers are involved. 

**For Rickeen shipweek, thanks to the machinations of the lovely _[@frozensnares](https://tmblr.co/mt7IjFMEXrUEUetawr0xa1A)._ Hurrah! This is for the Day 1 prompt: Firsts.**

* * *

 

“Rickon?”

“What?”

Too engrossed in watching the hunting videos on YouTube, the boy doesn’t really register his sister’s voice. Twelve years old, and very into outdoor pursuits like Uncle Benjen; they spend more time together than Rickon and his father ever did, before Ned’s death.

Twelve years old, and in the words of Arya, a bit fucked up with everything that happened. Dad being killed, and Robb going into the army almost in response to that, Sansa disappearing to King’s Landing to become a lady and ending up with a job, and responsibility, and a baby. Arya, well, she is still about, and Bran, though the former tends towards sleeping on the settees of various boy friends - not boyfriends - and the latter pretty much sticks to the lower levels of Winterfell due to falling off the bloody castle when he was younger.

Arya kicks the door open, looking around it. She never knocks, even when it became obvious that Rickon, not a little boy any more, uses the internet for things more adult than they all want to admit.

“Stannis is here.”  
  
“So?”  
  
“So? Mum wants you to fucking well be civilised for once.”

He rolls his eyes, groans, flops around on the bed with his iPad in his hand. “Do I have to?”  
  
“Yeah. Shift your arse, wolf boy.”  
  
In response he bares his teeth - he’s forgotten to brush but no one really checks these days. Mum still mourns Dad, and the others are too busy to bother. Bran does, when he’s home from his smart boarding school near the Neck, but Rickon tends to hide in places the wheelchair can’t get to in order to stop his well-intentioned but do-good brother ordering him into the bath, or to eat something apart from beef jerky, or to actually go and interact with humanity once in awhile rather than just the dogs or the outdoors.

“Don’t see why I have to-”  
  
“Because if you don’t,” and Arya’s smile tends towards the vicious, “I’ll tell Benjen that you’re a nasty little shit who doesn’t listen to his mother, and he’ll not take you shooting on the weekend.”

He snarls, all wolf-pup arrogance, before stomping after Arya’s retreating figure.

 

* * *

 

“Rickon.” Stannis is leaner than ever, and tanned from a month in Myr with Davos. His distaste for the youngest Stark is obvious, especially to Rickon himself. Not to worry though; he thinks that Stannis Baratheon is a dickhead. It’s a mutual thing.  
  
“Stan.”  
  
Catelyn’s mouth purses, and she gives her beloved and frustrating son a Look.

“Mr. Baratheon,” he adds, eyes rolling, all teenage attitude and hormonal rebellion.

Davos, who Rickon likes because he used to sail ships on the Narrow Sea and has the best stories, has a mug of tea in his hands and a tired but kindly expression. He has seven sons, and Rickon and he get on pretty well. He’s cool, for someone so old, and seems to understand about boys growing up. When he was younger, in his teens, Davos wasn’t so much wild as fostering a healthy dislike for authority. He’s got a criminal record, and isn’t the sort of man who anyone could ever think Stannis Baratheon would end up fall in love with, but he’s decent. He talks, and listens, and sees everyone’s side of things. When Rickon started ‘acting out’ as they called it, Cat rang Davos for advice, listened, disliked the apparently aspersions on her parenting skills, and carefully ignored much of the advice given. After all, Robb and Bran are the sort of good kids everyone wishes they could have. Sansa, too. Rickon and Arya are more similar, but even she isn’t as wild as him. She had Dad, after all, and Rickon can’t really remember Ned. He exists in a world where Cat is always a bit distant, and Starks are scattered across Westeros. He sees a therapist once a week, who tries to channel his destructive temper into something useful, constructive.

“Alright Rickon?”

“Alright, Davos. Alright yourself?”  
  
A grin between them.

“Alright.”

“What you doing up here?” Rickon clambers onto the settee, tucking his bare feet under his thighs, ignoring the censoring looks of Mum and Stannis.

“We’re going to the Wall. Shireen has a project to write for her exams, and it’s been bloody ages since we came North, so we decided on a road trip. Thought we’d pop in on the way past to see you all, mate. How’re you keeping?”  
  
They both look over to where Stannis and Cat are deep in conversation about schools, and then move slightly nearer. Davos is the sort of man that encourages closeness; Bran came out to him, and Sansa admitted that she loved Sandor Clegane of all people. He’s just dead nice, and listens, and doesn’t judge. He’d be an awesome Dad to have, and sometimes, as Rickon didn’t have much time to spend with his own father, Seaworth plays that role. They talk on Skype about things once a month, and it’s nice having someone around who isn’t a Stark. Even though he loves Uncle Benjen, it’s still weird because he’s Dad’s little brother.

“M’okay. Just…you know.” A shrug.

“It’s a shame you’ve got no kids of your own age to talk to up here.”  
  
“Mum wants me to go away to school.”  
  
Davos catches the tone, the note, the shudder, in Rickon’s voice.

 

* * *

 

“I’ve never seen such an incredible weirwood be-”

Rickon looks up from where he is with Davos.

The girl is slim, and serious, with long dark hair and the same blue eyes as Stannis. Striking more than pretty, really, until she turns and.

Shit.

Mum’d kill him if she knew he swore in his head.

The side of her face is a mass of scars, almost scale-like, like on a fish, and in an instant the girl is far more interesting than just another person. The scars are, well, cool? They lie across her cheek, from jaw to temple; a greyness almost, of rough flesh.

She catches him staring, and the corner of her mouth quirks rather self-consciously, and she goes to turn-

“No, I’m not weirded out,” he finds himself saying, not wanting her to go. “They’re awesome. Like Mystique, or an X-Man or something.”  
  
The girl considers him. She’s a few years older than Rickon, and neatly dressed in a pair of sensible jeans and a t-shirt with a molecular structure emblazoned across her chest. Not that she’s got anything to fill the top out yet, and she’s a skinny small thing. Bit like Rickon, who still hasn’t quite hit the growth spurt that Bran promises will come. According to his brother, he’ll end up tall like Sansa and well-built like Robb, rather than Arya and Bran’s small slenderness. Apparently he’s got the sort of shoulders that mean he’ll be broad and strong, and Rickon likes the idea. Like a proper hunter, and outdoorsman. Capable, like the faded memories of Ned, and the brighter newer ones of Benjen.

He’s banking on it. Eventually he wants to open an outdoor pursuit centre at Winterfell, and teach people how to survive in the wild.

“That’s the first time anyone’s ever said anything like that.” A slightly wary nice voice, with a bit of a Storm’s End accent.

“But they are. You’re like a mermaid. Definitely one of them.”  
  
“Mermaids have fish tails, not fish faces.”  
  
“Like a mermaid walking on land, with some scales to remind you that you’re a mermaid,” he persists.

She regards him quietly, and carefully, before padding towards where he and Davos sit. The man shifts, pats the cushion between him and Rickon, and the girl settles. She’s all long legs, and slight awkwardness. Not like Sansa, who is poised and aware of her prettiness, or Arya who doesn’t give a shit, but like, oh, a normal person. Not like a girl. Or, well, like a girl, just not like any of the ones Rickon knows.

“Shireen, this is Rickon. You’ll get used to him,” Davos promises, solemnity fenced with amusement.

“Nice to meet you.” She’s quite formal, for someone who’s probably not even sixteen.

“What’s on your t-shirt?” Rickon is mature enough to understand the weird urges he gets towards girls, but young enough to get away with staring at the diagrams on Shireen’s top and it not be considered sexual. Not that there is much there, though. “Is that coffee?”

“Serotonin. I like physics.”

“I didn’t know girls liked physics-”

Shireen blinks at him. “How many girls do you know?”

Uh. “Sansa, and Arya. Jeyne.” He bristles at her tone, fight or flight already rising.  
  
“Wow. Three whole girls? That’s a quarter dozen.”

Rickon feels the heat rise in his cheeks, the twisting anger in his gut. His temper is a legend amongst the Stark family. He decides, in a moment, that he hates Shireen with her scarred face, and her nice posh accent, and her condescending manner. He hates how she’s interesting, and how he’d like to know her because she’s unlike anyone he’s ever met before, and because even if she is a girl, she’s different. Different is exciting, and cool, and maybe he does have a tiny crush, and oh, that makes Rickon even more pissed off with the entire situation. They could have been friends, if she didn’t mock him. Maybe he’d have a girlfriend, his first kiss, his first everything.

He slithers from his seat, tensed and almost growling, pushes his way past a rather perturbed Stannis and out into the welcoming cold wilderness beyond the castle.

 

* * *

 

“You alright up there?”  
  
Davos knows the hiding places. Stark lads always climb when they’re emotional, and he spies Rickon’s grubby trainers dangling from a beam in one of the rickety old stable blocks.

“I hate her.”  
  
“Mate, c’mon down from there.”  
  
The boy refuses to, so instead Davos heaves his rapidly approaching fifty year old frame up the ladder, carefully edging along the wooden frame, and ending up precariously sitting. Rickon’s hands are fists, and white-knuckled, and he looks as if he wants to bite and punch.

“She’s…mean!” Slipping back into the language of a younger child.

“Shireen’s the least mean person I know, Rickon. Just, she’s self-conscious about the scars, mate, and people bringing attention to them. No one’s ever reacted like you - it’s the first time anyone’s met her and not pitied her for them.” Davos, who helped nurse his stepdaughter through the Greyscale, understands why the first reaction of everyone apart from Rickon is so negative. Without them she’d be pleasant, and average, and, well, ‘normal’. Not that the Baratheon-Seaworths have ever ascribed to that word; Stannis is eccentric, Davos is a battered old sailor with his own disabilities. He cherishes his daughter with a fierce love, but is also painfully aware that he can’t fully protect her from a world that despises the different. At almost sixteen, Shireen is mature, and sensible, and well-adjusted. Mostly. Her shyness with strangers comes across as an arrogance - in that, she’s just like Stannis. They are ridiculously similar.

“I was being nice. She looks cool with them.” Rickon glowers, shoulders rising to his ears. He’s already a teenager, isn’t he? Not quite the right age, but forward in his growth and his attitude. Matty was the same, and in the end he turned out decent enough.

“You know when people upset you, you tend to get really pissed off with them, right?” Rickon considers, and nods. “You’ve got a right temper on you, and if someone says something, you lash out because you feel hurt? It’s the same with Shireen. She’s so used to people looking at her scars and judging her, making all sorts of comments, that when someone compliments her, she’s not sure if they’re joking or-”  
  
“I wasn’t!”  
  
“I know, mate, I know.” He claps his hand onto the kid’s shoulder. “You’re honest as the day is long, you are, even if it gets you into trouble half the time. But she don’t know that, and you don’t know that when she’s upset she starts getting quite sarcastic, to deflect from her showing she’s hurting. Like you do, with your anger, right?”

The boy swings his legs, shrugs, then nods.

 

* * *

 

“Hey.”  
  
“Hey.” She looks up, dark hair falling over her scarred cheek. It’s as if Shireen’s hair has been cut to purposely try and conceal the marks. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to mock you. I get defensive about my face.”  
  
“S’okay.” Rickon settles on the floor, where she’s sat with her legs tucked up under her. “Sorry I got angry. And I meant it, about your scars. They’re really cool, really different.”  
  
Shireen looks at him through the curtain of her hair, a faint smile curving her mouth. She’s pretty when she smiles, when she looks more relaxed. Pretty in the way of nature, and the natural order, and outdoors. She’s not like the girls he thinks of as ‘real girls’ - Arya doesn’t count, obviously - but more relatable in a way. More actual, with her jeans, and long hair that isn’t styled or curled or whatever girls do with it, and her serious/clever face.

“You’re the first person to ever say that about them. I didn’t realise that you meant what you said. Sorry. Want to start over?”

“Uh. Yeah, I meant it. I don’t lie - Davos says I’m too honest. Okay? We can start over?”  
  
“First impressions sometimes suck, even though we always make them. Anyway, hi! I’m Shireen Baratheon. I love physics, books, reading, comics, Marvel rather than DC.” She holds her hand out to shake; her nails are bare, and nibbled, and Rickon takes her fingers in his politely. Mum would be so proud.

“I’m Rickon. Stark. I like comics as well. Uh. Outdoors things. Dogs - I’ve got Shaggydog, he’s my direwolf. Hunting with my uncle. Hiking. Science is cool.”  
  
“A pleasure to meet you.” She smiles then, fully, and a dimple dances in her cheek, under the scarring. “Can I meet your direwolf? I’ve never met one, before.”

“Sure.” Rickon gets to his feet, Shireen’s hand still in his, and he helps her up.

It feels nice. Weirdly, yeah. But nice.

 

* * *

 


	20. Marked

**Author:** AsbestosMouth

**Ship/s** : Stannis/Davos

**Warning/s** : Soulmates/soul mark trope. Fear the tropes!

**Summary** : Stannis hates soul marks. Soul marks, after all, are the invention of a perverse and sadistic God, and he thinks them an outmoded and ridiculous concept. This has nothing to do with his divorce or his lack of soulmate, and the fact everyone else is happy and in love apart from him. No. Not at all. 

_Prompt for[@comamdelat](https://tmblr.co/mZO7o0N5kjdYctTaZmxkt8w) who wanted Davos and Stannis soul mates. Aww. I went and used soul marks for extra cheesy goodness._

 

* * *

 

Soul marks.

Stannis Baratheon thinks they are nothing but an idiocy, a nuisance, a foolishness derived from some mocking God who decided, one day, to torment those who worshipped at His feet.

He nurses half a pint of bitter, which rather reflects his darkened mood, and glowers at the beer-sodden bar towel before him.

“You alright?”

No. He’s not bloody alright, and he glares broken glass and razor blades at the kind-eyed older man with the beard. Davos, and the barman introduced himself the moment Stannis ordered beer - he doesn’t even like beer, but they had no decent red wine, the whisky selection is little to write home about, and he wasn’t going to order something non-alcoholic, not today of all days - frowns ever so slightly.

“Why should I not be fine?”  
  
“You’ve been grinding your teeth for the last few minutes.” The way that this Davos says it makes Stannis plummet even further into this hellishness that pervades. So decent, and caring, as if the man actually worries. Probably all to do with a stranger having a nervous breakdown in this random rural pub in the middle of the Crownlands, miles from anywhere.

He almost crashed his convertible Mercedes, bought in a moment of mid-life crisis propelled madness, into a cow.

It is that rural that there isn’t even a village shop. Just this muddy, slightly brown-tinged wilderness, complete with yammering locals and a man with a Flea Bottom accent.

They get everywhere, Flea Bottomers.

“Soul marks,” he finds himself saying, more sour than the filth he attempts to drink. “Why would anyone believe that they are anything but a ridiculous concept?”  
  
“Oh,” says the barman. Stannis feels him absorbing the slightly rumpled but expensive suit, the gold watch, the hand-stitched leather brogues, the silk tie. Not judging though, but assessing. “Break up?”  
  
“How did you guess?” He chuckles, a hoarse and raw thing in his chest. Stannis normally laughs very little, and even more since-. Well.

Davos ducks under the bar, pulls out a bottle of a middling single malt, pours a generous measure into a slightly finger marked glass, and places it next to the half-drunk loathsomeness that is the local brewed beer.

“I cannot drink it. I’m driving.”  
  
“I’ve got a room upstairs, if you get hammered. You look like you could do with getting a bit pissed.”

 

* * *

 

“My brother,” Stannis slurs, and he’s taken off his jacket, rolled up his sleeves, and fumbles sloppily at his tie, “has no soul mark. That is because Robert is a whore. My other brother is shickeningly happy with his husband. Matching soul marks. I hate them. Hate. Haaaate.”  
  
Nudging occurs, and Davos pours another drink. He’s a really good listener.

“I married, you see, and had a little girl. Ohhh, not me. My wife. My Selyse. Hah! We hated soul marks together. Us sensible people against the world, even if we didn’t like each other. Not much. But then, of course, her soul mark turns up, doesn’t it? She falls in love with that red-haired temptress, and leaves me to run off with a lesbian from…somewhere. Eastern sort. From Thingy. But today is my divorce final day.”

Trying to click his fingers to jog a memory fails. Stannis spends the next few minutes telling his hand that it’s useless.

“What about you?”  
  
“I’ve got seven sons, and my wife and I are still good friends. Better as mates though, rather than being together. Odd though, we always thought our soul marks matched, but when we finally realised they were different, we’d got married. Turned out that I had a mole that wasn’t part of the soul mark, and by then she was pregnant, and we were happy enough. She’s a good girl.”  
  
“I have no sons.” Stannis’ heart breaks a little. No one to carry the Baratheon name, given Robert’s inability to sire children that aren’t bastards, and Renly can’t exactly impregnate Loras. Not for want of trying, which makes him both slightly queasy and a bit jealous. Not that he wants to have sex with his brother in law, but sex, in general, would be very welcome.

Selyse’s lesbianism makes perfect sense at this point. No wonder they never had sex.

“I always wanted a daughter-”  
  
Whatever salient, caring point Davos was about to make, drunk Stannis stamps all over him with his massive Boots of Self-Pity.

“Even Rooshe Bolton’s got one. Why’s he got one? He’s awful. Such a boor. Why’s Roose Bolton got one, and I’ve not got one? It’s not fair. No one should have one. Everyone should be miserable.” Davos neatly avoids a rather melancholic manic poke to his chest. “Oberyn has two! He’s a greedy Dornish bastard. And Brienne, and she’s bloody ugly. Lovely girl, but Gods, her face. Everyone’s got a soul mate apart from me, and-”  
  
Suddenly aware of something, Stannis rubs his face. His fingers come away wet, and he wonders if he’s sweating, but then, awfully, the truth dawns.

“I’m not crying. I’m just leaking.”

A rough warm hand rubs his shoulder, callous skidding across expensive cotton/linen mix.

“Least you’ve not got one. Me an’ you ‘gainst the world, Davvy.”

The last thing Stannis remembers before he passes out are the crow’s feet at the corners of Davos’ bright brown eyes, and the hand petting his back.

 

* * *

 

His head, unfortunately, feels like there is a Bolton living in it. Stannis groans, fights nausea, pulls the blanket over his head, prays to Gods he doesn’t believe in, all at the same time, for the pain to please bugger off.

Finally surfacing because he needs the bathroom, he finds that Saint Davos of Wherever the Hells He Is has left painkillers, a pint of water, and a bucket - presumably for if he needed to vomit. After taking the pills, drinking, and debating for twenty minutes if his stomach wants to void, his essentially humanity is partially restored.

Though he’s not quite sure where his clothes are.

They’re definitely not on him, though thankfully he still wears boxers. Unfortunately, they were a gag gift from Lenly (or Roras, whatever portmanteau they insist on being called) and have suggestively placed Sevenmas puddings in full festive splendour on the buttocks.

Mortification, thy name is Baratheon.

The robe he finds smells quite comfortingly of Davos - a sort of mixture of earth, and salt, and whisky, with a touch of cologne lurking deep - and it keeps him decent in the search for his clothing. Of course Stannis makes the bed, pulls the curtains, tidies up the bedside table, debates giving the tiny bathroom a quick once over - he is a stress cleaner - but eventually ends up downstairs.

“Morning.” Davos looks up from a bacon sandwich and a metal pint pot of tea, expression curious.

“Morning.”

Tea and bacon sandwiches are the nectar of the Seven. Whatever sickness he still feels flees in the face of grease, sugar, and tannin so strong that it could almost dissolve the spoon.

“Did you sleep alright?”

Something seems off. Davos, from the fragments Stannis can remember, is a kindly, warm sort of person. His entire tone, his body language, screams politeness rather than the sort of dependability that encourages absolute strangers to spill their life stories, get that drunk, and end up sleeping in the man’s bed.

“Yes. Thank you.” Equally polite.

Davos removes his t-shirt.

Stannis blinks, rabbit-in-headlights. If anything that he imagined could happen at that precise moment in time, his host stripping off was not one of his immediate thoughts. Davos is broad in the shoulder, a little ribby, soft in the stomach. Furry. Lots of blown blue-ink sea faring tattoos across his biceps and onto his shoulders.

The oddest urge to crawl over and lay his head upon that noble breast and close his eyes attempts to overwhelm. Stannis beats it back with a metaphorical stick.

“I just wanted to show you something.” Rising hesistantly from the chair, Davos comes over, crouches at Stannis’ feet, taps the flesh over his chest (over his heart) with a scarred finger. Whatever maimed the man’s hand, Stannis, ever the lawyer, hopes that the necessary insurance and health and safety checks were in place.

It’s a soul mark. A little battered, like the rest of Davos, and worn with the decades, but it sits there jauntily slightly to the left of his sternum.

“Oh.”  
  
“Aye.”  
  
“…what is that, by the way? I’ve always wondered.” Renly said it was a tulip corm. Someone else suggested a very badly modelled set of labia (Robert, of course). No one else outside of the brothers, and Selyse, has seen Stannis’ soul mark. After all, it is on his arse. Which therefore suggests that his boxers came off at some point, and, presumably, were immediately put back on when the soul mark came to light.

Stannis isn’t as uncomfortable with that as he technically should be.  
  
“An onion, apparently.”

He stares at the mark, ears growing redder. An onion. Of course it is - there’s layers, and everything. Obviously there’s some symbolism that Stannis doesn’t understand; peeling back layers to reveal what lies underneath, or how it’ll make you cry for days, or whatever else those charlatan mark readers say.

“What do we do, then?”

Davos seems quite controlled for a man who’s just found his soulmate. Stannis respects him for that. Everyone else tends to get overbearingly and insufferably romantic about the entire thing.

“Are you homosexual?” he asks. It’s best to get the obvious question out of the way. “Perhaps this is a heterosexual life partnership?”

“Er. I find you pretty good looking, to be honest.” Davos scruffs a hand through his hair. “I’ve had sex with blokes before, so I know what to do, but I’ve never gone out with one properly. You?

“I find myself thinking about using your belly as a pillow.” Stannis fights the need - compulsion - to do just that. How restful would sleeping on Davos be, as he murmured in his ridiculous Flea Bottom accent about cricket, or cows, or beer, or whatever these country types enjoy? “Please do not tell anyone that I said anything about your stomach.”

“I won’t. But yeah. It’s a start then. These things have to start somewhere.”  
  
“Quite.” A sigh. “Could you please re-dress yourself? I cannot concentrate.”  
  
Something glimmers in the murky muddy depths of Davos’ eyes, all amused and kind and a little sexy.

“Want another cuppa?”  
  
“If you would.”

 

* * *

 


	21. Snow Time

**Title:** _Snow Time_

**Author:** AsbestosMouth

 **Ship/s** : SanSan.

 **Warning/s** : UTTERLY DISGUSTINGLY FLUFFY AS FUCK.

 **Prompt:**   “Don’t you dare throw that snowba-, goddammit!” 

**Note:** The follow-up to _Circle Time_ , which can be found [here](http://asbestosmouth.tumblr.com/post/146717650128/tumblr-fic-circle-time). Lyanna Mormont is Sandor’s five year old daughter. Sandor’s a single dad. Sansa works voluntarily at Winterfell Library, teaching Circle Time to young children.

 

* * *

 

“Don’t you dare throw that snowba-, goddammit!”

Of course she ignored that. Selective lip reading in a deaf five year old is pretty much normal, and when Sandor Clegane is the father of the child, to be expected. At least that one didn’t get him in the balls, like the previous snowball. Oddly proud, because he taught her well, he raced over and scooped the dark haired little girl into his arms, swinging her before kissing her forehead.

Lyanna’s grey eyes sparkled bright as she grinned cheekily, signing frantically.

_Got you good!_

Sansa knitted her fingerless gloves because Lyanna said she felt wordless without her fingers being on show. He’d turned up at the library to pick his girl up, and ended up being quietly told off by the woman he was quite in love with.

“She was shivering, Sandor.”  
  
“You get her to keep bloody gloves on, then. She’s speechless with them on. Hates the bastard things.”

Sansa tilted her head, set her jaw, and the next day - the next fucking day, and Sandor knew how long it took to knit even child-sized things - she turned up on his doorstep with a simple pair of black fingerless gloves.

“These are for Lyanna,” she said, pressing them into his hands, before Sansa, pretty in the snow and ice, and pink-cheeked and lovely, went up on her toes and wound the softest, blackest scarf about his neck. “This is for you.”  
  
“You made this?”  
  
She nodded.

“But this is insane.”  
  
“Don’t you like-?” Her expression plummeted, stone into an icy pond.

“No. No. No one’s made anything for me, but Sansa. This took you ages. Weeks. Shit.”

“You and Lyanna need to match, and I didn’t know your hand size, so I made you a scarf.”

Someone squealed, slipped past Sandor, hugged Sansa’s leg enthusiastically. Lyanna, in one of her weird moods as usual, refused to take off her dinosaur onesie.

 _Grawwwwr,_ she signed, beaming at the adults.

“Sansa made you some gloves, pup. They’ve got no fingers, so you can talk.”

She gaped, saucer-eyed, waving her hands around so much that it took Sandor far too long to put the mitts on his daughter.

_I can talk! Thank you Sansa. I love you. You are pretty. Daddy loves you too._

“Bloody hells, squirt.”

“I love you too, Lyanna.” Sansa’s perfect lips curved into something stunning. “And I love your Daddy.”

She went up on her toes once more, kissed his cheek. She smelled of lemon curd, and snow, and fresh clean linen, and of course Sandor caught the woman in his arms, nuzzling at the citrus brightness of her beautiful hair.

“Since you and Lyanna can keep warm now - and that reminds me; you need a better coat, you can’t wear a leather jacket through winter, Sandor, you’ll catch your death - would you like to come to the park and make a snowman with me? We can sing ‘We’re Walking In The Air,’ Lyanna, like we learned at the nursery?”

_Can we go?_

They’d never really played in the snow. The back yard, so small they had room for a couple of pot plants and nothing else, never caught the stuff very well. Lyanna refused to wear gloves. Sandor hated having to go out in the bloody cold, which hurt his scars, but…shit. The scarf, made with some incredible soft yarn, could wind about his neck, and cheeks, and protect him from the frost.

Sansa Stark. Brilliant woman.

“Aye, alright.”

He regretted it only a little when his beloved daughter and his beloved girlfriend ganged up on him to pelt him with bloody snowballs.

With Lyanna tucked safely subdued under one arm, he advanced upon the frantically giggling Sansa, laughing so hard that she couldnt even move until he decided to play dirty. Her mouth against his was chill, lips slightly burned with cold, but the warmth of her tongue tempted shivers along his spine, his thighs. The kiss warmed; it blazed through the stiffness of his fingers and limbs, settling like a glowing shard in his chest.

Perfection. He never wanted this to end; him, Lyanna, Sansa.

“Sansa?”  
  
“Yes?”  
  
“Marry me?” What else could be said in such a moment as this?

She closed her eyes, pressed close, tucked her head under his chin, and murmured, almost too quietly, “yes, please.”

 

* * *

 


	22. Checkmate

**Title:** _Checkmate_

**Author:** AsbestosMouth

 **Ship/s** : Tormund/Brienne

 **Warning/s** : Gratuitous topless Wildling sex god alert *ded*

 **Prompt:**   _“Come over here and make me.”_

 **Note:** Tormund is going to Tarth for Sevenmas Day with Brienne. She’s uptight about it - especially with what he wants to wear.

 

* * *

 

“Tormund? We should be getting going in a few minutes if we’re to catch the ferry.”  
  
“Which one?” He stares at three shirts, all of which are the same sort of red plaid. One might have slightly smaller check. One verges upon tartan and could be construed as aggressively Wildling. The last isn’t the same warm flannel as the others but a softer brushed cotton - which is basically flannel, but to those who know these things, isn’t. Three plaid shirts, of eerie similarity, but then Tormund’s entire wardrobe is made of flannel, skinny jeans, mad shoes, and oddly eccentric coats.

Brienne calls him a hipster because, really, he looks like one.

“You’re not serious?” She’s wearing blue, and looks like an Old God brought to life in blonde and ivory and sapphire. She’s bloody beautiful, is Brienne. Tormund tells her constantly. Texts her it at least three times a day. Sends her little random selfie videos of him blowing kisses, beaming wide, reiterating that Brienne is the best thing that’s ever happened to him. That includes making friends in King’s Landing - best friends really, with Sandor and Beric - and finally managing to stop working shifts and have A Career in something he enjoys. Which Brienne teases him about.

Because, apparently, craft beer and microbrewing for fun and profit is really hipster.

Gods help her if Brienne actually ever meets a real hipster. Tormund just looks like one, but possesses the genial affability of an enormous overgrown puppy. He’s cheerful, and confident, and loudly happy with the world unless it threatens people or things he loves, and then his Wildling temper and redheaded fire take over and annihilate everything. He certainly doesn’t like things because they’re uncool, because if he did, he’d not be head over heels for Brienne who is probably the coolest person in his entire universe.

“You cannot wear a plaid shirt and jeans to Sevenmas dinner, Tormund.”  
  
She’s stressy. Of course she is. Brienne shifts her weight, tension furrowing her brow.

“It’s just dinner with your Dad. I love your Dad. It’s not like we’ve not met!”

“It’s Sevenmas dinner-”

It’s Important. Selwyn and Tormund have met, a few times now. He likes Brienne’s Dad. Brienne’s Dad likes him. They talk about beer and rugby, and argue gently over bits of history, and then move on to loudly appreciating Brienne and making her turn very pink as she looks at her shoes. They chat for a minute or two on the phone before Tormund passes it over to his girlfriend. They’re verging on almost mates. It’s not like she’s taking someone home for the first time, is it?

Wait.

Tormund’s never been to Tarth. All of the visits have been Selwyn coming to King’s Landing, so neutral territory. The Sapphire Isle is another thing. Has she ever taken a boy home with her? Renly, probably, but he never counts. That makes it Important, certainly. Not for him, because Tormund doesn’t work in the same way as southrons, but for Brienne, definitely.

Beyond the Wall all this would be so much easier. Lots of booze, and eating, and fighting, and sheer enjoyment at being alive. None of this etiquette thing that Brienne does and Tormund doesn’t quite understand. What’s so terrifying at taking him home for Sevenmas? And it isn’t as if any of them celebrate it for religious purposes, so there’s no warring between the Faith of the Seven and the Old Gods, is there? It’s just food, and booze, and no fighting, and talking. It’s chill. It’s cool.

He eyes her as she checks her watch for the fifth time since coming into the room. They’ve got a ferry to catch in two and a half hours. It takes an hour to get to the terminal. That’s plenty of time to help Brienne relax a bit, isn’t it?

“Put on a suit. Please.”  
  
He grins, all manic and glittery.

“Tor-”

“It’s just clothes, Bri. Your Dad’s seen me before! He knows how I dress! I know it’s important, I get it, but it’s not going to be this crazy thing, is it? It’s me, and you, and Selwyn, and we’re going to eat some goose, and drink some beer, and open some presents. Me and him will get a bit drunk and fall asleep on the settee. There will be snoring. It’s going to be okay. Promise. You’re going to be okay. I’m there!”

“I’ve never taken anyone I care about home before. It’s not just going home, it’s-” She sighs, sits on the edge of the bed with her hands laid along her awesome thighs. “I’ve never let anyone in like that before. Dad’ll show you photos of when I was little, with Galladon. You’ll see my bedroom. It’s pink, by the way. Really very pink. I still have stuffed animals, and Dad won’t change it ever. You’ll meet people who knew me before I came to King’s Landing, before I became me, and-”  
  
He settles next to her, companionable arm around her shoulder. “It won’t be weird.”  
  
“What if I’m not what you expected?”  
  
Tormund gives her the full effect of his peculiarly expressive kittenish grey-blue eyes, wiggling his impressive eyebrows, and it at least makes Brienne smile a tiny bit.

“I don’t know if you know, but I love you a lot. So, seeing you as a little girl, and seeing where you lived before, and meeting those people? It lets me see more of you, and that’s amazing! If you want I can show you photos of me wearing nothing but my underpants on my head, or when I fell into a pond full of frogspawn when I was wearing pink corduroy trousers because my Mum thought I looked cute? I don’t even mind you meeting my old friends from up north, even if they’ll tell you about all the bad things I got up to when I was young! Because that’s just me, and you like me. You told me.” He grins wider, all white teeth and facial hair. “And, see? You’re being all ‘but I’m all grown up and different,’’ but the reason that is because you were you when you were little, too! If it’ll make it better, I’ll steal you from here and take you to Hardholme come the New Year? I’ll show you mine if you show me yours?”

Of course he winks. He’s Tormund. But, hey, it’d be nice for Brienne to meet his family. They’re a bit more mad than him these days, since the South has knocked off a few of his rough corners.

She sighs, rests her head against his very naked shoulder, over one of his woad-blue swirly tattoos.

“I’m nervous. I’m sorry.”  
  
“I’m Tormund! Nice to meet you!”

“…you spend too much time talking to my Dad with ‘jokes’ like that.”

She smiles. His heart sings.

“Anyway! Which shirt?” He extricates himself, pads back to the wardrobe, holds each against him with a flourish.

“Whichever you prefer. We need to get going.”  
  
Still tense. There’s only one way to relax tense Brienne. No. Two ways, if the first is to throw her into rugby practice with fourteen sweaty muddy muscular men who she dominates by dint of being amazing.   
  
Orgasms. Spectacular beard-enhanced swirly tongued orgasms.

Tormund teasingly trails the soft flannel sleeve of his favourite shirt down his bare chest, gives her the old come-hither Wildling leer.

“Come over here and make me.”

 

* * *

 


	23. Coffee and TV

**Author:** AsbestosMouth

 **Ship/s** : Gendry/Arya (my first one, I am no longer a virgin, etc.etc.) Mentions of others.

 **Warning/s:** Swearing, hatred of hipsters, Ramsay - the usual.

 **Summary** : Arya hates working in _Brewed Awakening_. Not only does she loathe coffee, her bosses, and her co-workers, but hipsters flock to the place no matter how rudely she and the other staff treat them. At least, when the mechanic with the filthy hands comes in, he asks for nothing but a black coffee.

Why didn’t anyone tell her the bike shop around the corner employs the hottest man this side of Oberyn Martell? 

_Prompt by[@adelatur](https://tmblr.co/mIP99YEImy3u5Ytv_3AiBTQ) who asked for a bit of Gendry/Arya in a coffee shop AU. Tropey McTropeface lives!_

 

* * *

 

Arya hates coffee. She decided that she loathed the stuff after exactly fourteen hours, eleven minutes, and thirty seven seconds of working at _Brewed Awakening._

Which, she admits, is a pretty fucking funny name.

According to Tyrion, he ended up with a short list. _Has Beans_ amused him, but he points out that he isn’t even forty yet. _Steaming Hotties_ implied a certain attractiveness of staff, and since before he employed Arya the choice was between Ramsay Bolton (who is obsessed with coffee to the point of creepiness and keeps staring disconcertingly at the army veteran with the eyepatch. Apparently he wants to see if the scars go all the way down) or her sister’s boyfriend (Clegane is a dickhead, and a nightmare to work with, and is basically her manager which really pisses Arya off even more) then that was against the Trade Descriptions Act. The usual pop culture related puns didn’t quite hit the spot, hence the actual name of the actual coffee house.

It’s a coffee house. Not a cafe. Apparently Tyrion and Varys sourced authentic 18th century coffee house paintings to make this an interesting experience for all involved.

Tyrion and Varys are also dickheads. Pretentious dickheads at that.

But then, Brewed Awakening is a pretentious dickhead kind of place.

“Darling, can’t you look a little more-?” And Varys clicked his fingers. “Hipster?”  
  
Arya almost punched him in the face. “You don’t make fucking Bolton dress hipster!”  
  
Everyone else agreed that Sandor’s current enormous beard put him safely hipster friendly. Ramsay refused to swap out his Doc Martens for Converse, citing that if he needs to kick a bitch in the face, canvas will lead to him breaking his toes. Arya, scruffy and half-goth, all striped tights with holes in, denim shorts, and the burgeoning idea of a wolf-themed tattoo sleeve existing in her brain, told Varys to try it. Go on. Make her into a hipster’s wet dream.

Varys ended up distracted by Tyrion taking him out to lunch, and the bastards defected to the tea shop across the square run by the two gays.

The bell rings above the door, and Arya braces herself for Yet Another Hipster Invasion. Apparently, since the shop employs ‘interesting’ staff - none of them bother with customer service, tend to insult anyone who tries to buy coffee in the hope of driving them away, and none of them understand why the hipsters keep lapping it up and returning for more insults, swearing, and disturbing promises of evisceration - it’s the place to be seen in King’s Landing.

Which is a bit shit, if you hate the people you desperately don’t want to serve.

“What do you want?” she grumbles, before focussing, and-

Well.

Okay.

She dubs him Not A Hipster, or NAH for short. He’s also the first vaguely normal person she’s seen all day, Varys and Tyrion included. Everything’s been soy milk, and pumpkin spice, and ethically sourced Meereen cotton batik prints. It’s a tweedy and skinny jeans kind of day. Beardy.

“Coffee.”  
  
“And?”

“Black. Just a big black coffee with none of that other stuff in it.”  
  
Seriously. She could kiss him, and not just because he’s good looking in a dark and grubby sort of way. NAH sports overalls - the work kind, not the denim fashion accessory kind - and his hands are large, and strong, and filthy. He’s filthy, and sexy, and about eight foot taller than her. Not Clegane-sized, thank everything, because that’s just a waste of skin and air, but big, and sturdy, and powerful, and probably hot as fuck without clothes on. The sort of man that she could actually fight, and punch, and bite, and argue with, rather than the delicate weedy hipsters who try and give her their phone numbers because apparently she’s their manic dream pixie girl who exists only to make their lives complete.

Arya, despite her best efforts, attracts a certain breed of hipster tosser.

“No syrup? Spice? Non-dairy fat free milk? No grande?” She leans forward on the counter, up on her toes, staring into NAH’s tired but bright eyes.

“In a bucket would be nice, if you’ve got one clean.”  
  
Arya grins.

The bell clangs, discordant, and a regular - one of the ones that thinks Arya should go out with him - pushes past NAH, demands his skinny macchiato with fat-free whip, a shot of caramel, and her phone number.

“Piss off. How many fucking times do you need to be told?”  
  
“But you’re so perfect-”  
  
Arya gives him the sort of perfected withering look designed to murder men like him.

“Back of the queue, twatface.”

“But-”

A shooing motion, a glare, and the interloper slinks behind NAH, giving the gorgeous bull, beast, rideable whatever animal he may be (NOT Hound, wrong!) a disgusted look.

Oh. That’d work. Fuck, yeah.

The grin that curves across Arya’s face is most unpleasant.

“Enormous coffee,” she purrs - and she’s seen enough Oberyn Martell talkshows to know how to do that, and she’s been practicing it since she was fourteen and a bit in love with the slinky Dornish television host - “and my phone number, coming right up…”  
  
Shit. Name. Oh. Name tag. He’s in trade. Rough trade. Well, Sansa likes her men rough as arseholes, so a mechanic - Arya recognising the shop name from around the corner, down the alley, where Clegane gets his motorbike serviced - is a step up. Maybe it’s a family trait to really get off on grubby well-built men who have the sort of filthy hands that feel enormous and strong and rough on her naked, tensing body?

A dazzling vision of being shagged against the wall in the alleyway where the bike shop lives has to be pushed out of her head. Otherwise she’d go and close the shop, drag this Gendry away, and just do him in the middle of her shift.

“Gendry.”

For a moment the man looks faintly bewildered, and to be honest that’s just a bit hot. Only for a moment, however; he inclines his head towards the now chuntering hipster, Arya nods just a little, and the mechanic breaks into the most glorious, filthy, sexy grin she’s ever had the joy of witnessing. He understands. The beautiful enormous bastard.

“I’ll pick you up after work, if you want to do something?”   
  
Yeah, you, she almost replies. “Sounds good with me. I’ll get off about five.”

The door crashes closed as the lovelorn hipster brays, makes a run for it, fills Arya’s angry heart with a savage joy. Gendry takes his coffee, leaving unrepentant oily finger prints on the paper cup, leans up against the counter. Neither of them pay any attention whatsoever to the fleeing fool, because to be perfectly honest this is far more interesting than merely pissing off some random dickhead.  
  
That smirky grin doesn’t fade; it sharpens, and Arya feels her stomach and other parts of her throb. “And then you’ll get off again about three hours after that, if you’re good.”

“I’ve never been good in my entire fucking life!”  
  
“Want me to be the judge of that?”

 

* * *

 

Tyrion peers over his laptop, eyeing Arya suspiciously.

  
She’s…singing. She’s actually rather good. However, this is so very unlike Arya that he’s vaguely worried she’s finally murdered someone and let Ramsay have the corpse to play with. No one can be that angry and that cheerful without doing something utterly nefarious, can they?

“Drugs?” Please let it be drugs.

Varys, sipping tea - he hates coffee, he’s invested in the shop for nothing but cash and his adoration of Tyrion - snorts.

“Laid, darling.”  
  
Oh. Thank fuck. “Who? Anyone we know?”  
  
“That frightfully butch mechanic. Bobby’s bastard.” Varys knows everything, for he is Varys. He also reviews the CCTV in the shop with a strangely morbid fascination, keeping the more interesting pieces of video for blackmail purposes.

“He’s how much taller? How does he even fit?”  
  
“Het sex totally your area,” Varys reminds him. “I’m sure your debauched mind can fill in the blanks somewhere.”

The door jangles. A well-built young man spattered in engine oil makes his way to the counter. He’s got a scrap of pink and black dangling from a rather calloused and manly finger.   
  
“Thought I better bring your bra back.”  
  
Arya, unmoved, merely unhooks it from Gendry’s filthy hands, uses it as a lasso about that impressively wide neck, and yells that she’s going on her break and might be slightly late back.

“Everyone’s getting laid apart from us, V.”

“And Bolton.”  
  
“Thank the Seven for the smallest of mercies.”

The thought of Ramsay actually sleeping with someone is enough to drive them to the tea shop, where Renly and Loras make understanding noises and the best carrot cake in Westeros.

 

* * *

 


	24. Something Stupid

**Author:** AsbestosMouth

 **Ship/s** : Arya/Gendry

**Prompt:** _“This is without a doubt the stupidest plan you’ve ever had. Of course I’m in.”_

* * *

 

“Do you ever think,” Arya said, stretching out her entire body and still failing to be as tall as the lounging man at her side, “that superheroes are just normal people who suddenly decide to start wearing a costume one day? Because they’re in a costume, everyone automatically thinks that, shit, there’s a superhero, and they actually become one just because of public acknowledgment? That if a criminal sees this superhero running towards them in a fucking cape or something, they get the hells out of there because they, too, believe that the person is a superhero? Even though they’re just a random in a costume?”

Gendry doesn’t even move, though he squints over at her.

They’re halfway down a bottle of JD, taking advantage of the not having to be at workness. Arya pays her way through university with shifts at the coffee place near to Gendry’s motorcycle repair shop, and that’s how they met. He, out of all of the people in King’s Landing, orders black coffee without any poncy soy, or fatless milks, or foams, or ridiculous Lysene names. No grand, or venti for him. Big black coffee with one sugar. All a man needs.

They’re very naked, and very shagged out, and very cuddled up. Gendry produces enough body heat to drive a blacksmith forge, and Arya, thin and boyish even at twenty, flops her entire body over his muscled torso.

He doesn’t mind it. Not at all. She’s cute, and easy to talk to and tease, and they’re into the same stuff, and they’ve got a slightly angry flirty thing that they do. All snippy comments, and him commenting she looks like a boy, and she tells him he’s a stupid dickhead half the time, but they work really well together. Someone softer, and Arya’d drive them insane. She’s somewhat selfish, for good reason, and can be domineering. Gendry’s the sort of iron-cored man who won’t let her go too far. He’s a constant. A strong, carefully protective constant, who lets her be herself but pulls her back from being overly much. They’re as stubborn as each other.

It works.

Gendry’s starting to fall in love with her, and it’s easy to do so. Arya’s outwardly hard as nails, but she feels far deeper than anyone could ever imagine. He’s always been a pretty simple sort of person - he says what he thinks, and tries to be a decent member of society. Not academic bright, but he’s good with his hands, looks after those who can’t quite look after themselves completely. The bullied. The terrorised. When they first got together, properly, when it wasn’t just sex but a bit of dating too, he’d thought Arya didn’t need his protection. He was wrong. She’s softer than anyone could ever expect, and feels things almost too much.

“So, what you’re saying is that anyone can be a superhero? Because the cape makes society think they are?”  
  
“Yes.” She rubs her cheek into his dark chest hair like a wolf cub. “Gendry?”  
  
It’s obvious what’s coming. It doesn’t matter though, because he’s drunk most of the bourbon. Arya’s so tiny that even if she’s got a steel stomach for booze, it does get to her more than him. Gendry’s muscles absorb alcohol. She always wonders how he can eat so much, but he points out that a) he has a very physical job b) he does all his own blacksmithing as a hobby, welding and fabrication for the shop, and that’s hard on a body and c) he has what he likes to call a Pudding Leg. Whenever they go out, and quite often Gendry finishes off what Arya leaves and feels stuffed, he can still eat something sweet as he’s got a secret stomach in his left thigh for that purpose.

It’s a stupid joke, but still makes her laugh. Arya laughing is magic.

“I know what you’re going to say-”

“Can we make superhero costumes? I can be Needle, you can be The Bull. We can save the innocent on the streets of King’s Landing!”  
  
“You just want a cape, don’t you?”  
  
She grins blearily, grey eyes overbright. Seven, Arya is the most incredible girl he’s ever met. She’s the North. She’s swords. Darkness turned towards light with a touch of poison and a whole load of clever cunning masking her inner fragility. Arya is electricity, lightning.

“C’mon, Gen. It’ll be fun. You can have a hammer like Thor. We’ll do your costume so it’s sleeveless because you can show off your arms and make criminals faint with your manliness. It’ll be epic.”  
  
He sighs good-naturedly, tangles his fingers into Arya’s scruffy fauxhawk and rubs at her scalp. She loves that. She melts, purring, onto his chest.

“Superheroes. In King’s Landing. You daft woman. This is without a doubt the stupidest plan you’ve ever had.”

Gendry’s hands slither, find Arya’s lean hips, pull her up so she’s straddling his chest and is gorgeous above him. Her hands brace either side of his head, and they, as one, grin.

“Of course I’m in.”

 

* * *

 


	25. Black Dog

**Author:** AsbestosMouth

 **Ship/s** : SanSan

 **Warning/s** : Mentions of PTSD, alcoholism, domestic abuse (past).

 **Prompt:** “I thought you were dead.” 

 

* * *

 

Sansa. Beautiful, and elegant, and lovely. She moves like silk flowing across skin; legs from here to eternity combined with hair that should be classified as a Pantone colour (whatever the fuck that is) and the sort of hands they go on about on Strictly Come Dancing. Bruno Tonioli’d possibly explode with joy at Sansa’s delicate finger placement, even if she’s just standing still and doing nothing at all apart from breathing.

At least, when she’s awake.

Asleep? Different matter.

She starfishes. She snores. She dribbles. She sometimes talks about random shit, including flat-pack televisions, and changing the prices on calculators, and, for some reason, David Bowie. She hogs the duvet. She sometimes eats biscuits in bed, hunched over some romance novel bollocks on her Kindle, at 4am. She kicks. She twitches. She sometimes sleeps on her stomach and half suffocates herself.

Sansa is an hurricane of a sleeper. Never still, never silent, always wriggling and quivering. To start with, when they first became a proper couple, it pissed Sandor off. He finds it difficult to get to sleep at the best of times, and it’s made even worse when someone squirms, bounces, sighs, next to him. She’s the first person he’s ever shared a bed with for sleeping purposes; past girlfriends - of which there have been exactly two and it was more a ‘friends’ with benefits situation without actually being friends - came over, they’d fuck, and then they’d go home. Nice, easy, orgasms conducive to sleep. Great.

Sansa happened.

He asked her about it, eating breakfast after the second exhausting night they spent together.

“You’re fucking noisy in your sleep.” Slightly judgmental, yeah, because Sandor, knackered and grumpy, wanted to pass out once more, but the tone melted from his gruff morning voice at the haunted guilt that gilded her expression.

“I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry, Sandor.”

“S’alright. S’okay, San.”

Her long trembling fingers wrapped around a mug, one of Beric’s R’hllor ones that was clean and he’d snatched up, grumbling, at random, to make her a cuppa.

“I’m sorry.”  
  
“It’s nothing. Shit.” He didn’t understand why Sansa felt the need to react as she did.  
  
“It is.”  
  
She explained then. She told him about Joffrey, and being in the blond fucker’s bed, and how it ended up with her forced to sleep without shifting, and having to cry silently, because the little cunt hit her if she disturbed him. It dawned, unpleasantly but also heat-makingly wonderful in a strange dough ball of screwed-up mixed emotion, that Sansa felt comfortable enough with him, Sandor, to feel like she could make noise, move, be herself.

“I’ll try and be less-”  
  
“No you fucking won’t,” he told her, pulling her into a kiss that seemed to melt the windowpanes, and his soul, and his heart, all in one giddy and breath-defying embrace.

Sansa is the opposite of lovely when she sleeps, and Sandor loves her for it. He loves that she’s relaxed enough to be that selfish bed-hog. He loves how she salivates over his chest and mats his chest hair enough that he has to wash himself with a sponge with a rough scrubby bit on it to break the gel-like hold. He loves how she’ll cling to him, all soft and floppy and mostly asleep, nuzzle into his neck, murmur that the ponies are invading again, and pass out once more.

He loves her; she’s in his head whenever he’s awake and resting.

Repercussions, therefore, occur when his past collides with his present and future, in his sleep, and throws him to the metaphorical hounds.

Sandor comes to with a jolt, chest constricting, heart clenching as if caught in an outer space vacuum of horror that sets his being crawling. The red LED of his bastard alarm clock indicates that they’re approaching five in the morning; dawn threatens, the room a little bright. Enough to see that Sansa - his starfish, his tornado, his sleep devil - isn’t moving. She should be. She isn’t. Five in the morning, and she’s too silent. Too still.

Sleep addled, and terrified, and somewhere half in a warzone that he dreams of nightly, his head leaps to the most ridiculous conclusion.

It’s part of how Sandor is. The war, his service, his injuries, his trauma, affect him in ways that only people that go through the same - Beric, Jaime, Brienne - truly get. Demons. War demons. They’re all affected, in one way or another. Beric’s fire-worship and endless death wish. Jaime’s grimly sarcastic humour, grainy and bitter like coffee. Brienne’s desperation to save the fucking world, one honourable act at a time. Sandor’s black dogs, the ones that howl in his head and tell him the worst has happened in the most hideous of detail. Booze helps, but he’s trying to come off that. Self-medication is destructive in the end, and he wants to be functional for Sansa’s sake.

“Shit. San. Fuck.”  
  
He reaches out expecting, hand shaking palsied, to find her skin cold, her beautiful blue eyes glazed, and for that hideous moment that lasts too many lifetimes to count, Sandor thinks he’s lost her.

“What’s wrong?” Soft, and sleepy, but there. Awake. She’s awake. She’s not asleep. No wonder she’s not moving. She’s always so perfectly together when awake - force of fucking habit with her past, Sandor knows.

Relief overwhelms. The present bites at the past, driving the endless trauma back for a little while longer. He buries his head into her shoulder as bile threatens, kissing at warm flesh slightly scented with her white lily and ylang body moisturiser. “Sorry. Shit. I thought you were dead. You weren’t moving, and. Shit.”

Gentle touches trace circles on his bare shoulder, a dance of nails and satin.

“You fucking. Shit. You were still. You’re never still-”  
  
She kisses his forehead, wraps carefully determined arms about his torso. Grounds him. Brings him back.

They have demons, those who have been through hell. Sansa masks her emotions behind pretty smiles and careful neutrality. Schooled features. Words chosen, crafted, so she’s not a target. She may not have been shot, or lost a limb, or saw friends die and children dead and the entire sanity of the world compromised in the hellhole of Qohor, but there are other battles that leave mental scars just as valid.

Of anyone - any girl, in the whole fucking world - that Sandor Clegane could fall in love with, Sansa understands what terror can truly do. Two fractured people, drifting through life, shoring each other up just enough. That’s what they are. And, hells, it’s a miracle that they found each other. Thank the Gods, who Sandor sneakily sometimes believes in, for that.

“L’ve you, S’dor,” she murmurs drowsy and warm in his ear, chasing the black dogs of rage and hate and despair away to cower once more. “It’s alright. ‘M here.”

Sandor’s dogs. Sansa’s mockingbirds and lions. All beasts can be driven before the conviction that turns them from horror into nothing but a snatched memory of a half-woken dream. 

 

* * *

 


	26. WildWolf x StagPrincess

**Author** : AsbestosMouth

**Ship(s)** : Rickeen!   
 ****

**Trigger Warning(s) if applicable** : Fluffy Modern AU. Fairy tales. Mentions of ‘negging’ *shudder* Lots of it written in instant messenger format and textspeak.  
 ****

**Brief Summary:** A stranger who loves textspeak asks Shireen if her instant messenger handle - StagPrincess - means she really is royalty. She asks him if his - WildWolf - means he is actually a wolf. It devolves from there.

For [@frozensnares](https://tmblr.co/mt7IjFMEXrUEUetawr0xa1A) and Rickeen shipweek day 4 - Fairy Tales. 

 

* * *

 

****  
_WildWolf_ _: r u really a princess?_ **  
**

Shireen looked up at the ping. She really needed to change the sign in name on the messenger service, didn’t she?

_**StagPrincess:**  Are you really a wolf?_

_**WildWolf** : Wolfs dont kiss princesses but i want 2 kiss u_

Unfortunately for what could be an ardent suitor, or just some fratboy wanting to mess with her, Shireen learned her grammar from her father. The spelling and general disregard for convention made her eyeballs ache.

_**StagPrincess** : Princesses only kiss frogs, apparently._

_**WildWolf** : But u cant kiss prof baelish as hes gross!_

Despite herself, that earned a small tight-lipped smile.

_**StagPrincess** : Wolves are quite slobbery, aren’t they? If they are like domesticated dogs, they drool all over the place._

_**WildWolf** : u take that back :D_

_**WildWolf** : Wolfs r cool as fuck_

_**StagPrincess** : In all of the fairy tales, they tend to either eat people and die horrible deaths, or try and torment small pigs. The eating everything theme is widespread. It reflects a fascinating social commentary about the fears of previous centuries; even as far back as Aesop wolves were considered very dangerous. Wolves in sheepskins, after all._

_**WildWolf** : maybe i should eat u >:D_

Ugh. Fratboys. Why was she even talking to him? Eleven at night, and a test on various tenets of Astrophysics to take place in a few days, and really, Shireen didn’t have the time for this. Why she kept replying, she had no idea. Time for a break, maybe? Perhaps, truthfully, part of her wanted to win this - whatever this is - against the fratboy? Argument, no. Debate. Yes, she settled on debate.

_**StagPrincess** : I thought we were talking about the Princess and the Frog? Not Little Red Riding Hood._

_**WildWolf:**  maybe beauty and the beast?????_

She paused, hands suspended over the keyboard, her heart hammering. Of course he was zoning in on her scars, that Shireen wore in a certain ‘fuck you’ pride across her face and throat. They always looked towards some imperfection to pick at, to mock and belittle, in the chance of breaking self-esteem to the point where the targets would have sex with them. Shireen, having been a target of ‘negging’ in the past, knew the games, the tricks, the way that these men who had no concept of women as human beings worked.

_**StagPrincess** : I think you should take your tiny penis and shove it in your arse. It won’t work on me, but thank you for the laugh. Are you really that sad and pathetic to think that insulting someone and trying to drag them down will get you sex? Seriously?_

_**WildWolf** : what u on about_

_WildWolf: shit!!!!!!_

_**WildWolf** : Noooooooo not u beast, you are beauty. shit shireen i totally wasnt sayin that u got to believe me yeah_

_**WildWolf** : im the beast bein a wolf_

_**StagPrincess:**  How do you know my name?_

_**WildWolf** : bcos ur awesome and i want 2 get 2 know u and i fucked up :(:(:(_

_**WildWolf** : know u proper not like we r_

She stared at the screen, fingers damp.

_**StagPrincess** : Who is this?_

_**StagPrincess** : Don’t play games with me, I’m not in the mood at all._

_**WildWolf** : shit im gonna kill arya she said itd be romantic and shit_

Arya. She searched through her data banks for the friends and associates of her friend. Gendry or Pod? Definitely not. They were too busy cockfighting over Arya herself. Hot Pie wasn’t into girls. Lemmy’d got a girlfriend. Jaqen? Quite handsome, in that mature student way, but too old and mysterious and his typing tended towards the legible if odd.

Not friends, then family? It would explain the wolf part, since the Starks were, to a person, obsessed with everything lupine. Robb? Married, with a son. Bran and Jojen had been together for years. Rick-

Oh.

_**StagPrincess** : Rickon? Is this you?_

Rickon, Arya’s angry and sulky youngest brother, who just had his eighteenth birthday a few weeks previously, a first year at KLU, studying animal behaviour and veterinary science. The wildest of the wolves. Shireen still remembered him as a scrawny ten year old who wanted to be an Army Ranger beyond the Wall, all gangly and almost as tall as she was at fourteen. She’d always been nice to him, because he seemed lonely and lost, and so very angry with the world, and Shireen was the type of person to try and make people feel better about themselves. She’d lost a parent too, though her father and Davos managed to keep everything more level, more normal. Rickon never had that, it seemed.

_**WildWolf** : yeah sorry shireen :( arya said itd be cool_

The relief, palpable, settled in her stomach for a split-second before Shireen realised, with a sticky hotness, that her good friend’s little brother - her eighteen year old brother - was trying to flirt with her.

_**StagPrincess** : When you say Arya told you to do this, why did she say that?_

_**WildWolf** : …_

_* **WildWolf is typing** *_

She waited, her textbook abandoned on the desk. It didn’t help that Rickon was quite grown up, at least physically. The Starks were, after all, a really handsome family; none of them were unattractive, in any way, shape or form, and if Shireen had a crush on Robb for a few years, that was to be expected. All of Arya’s friends had a thing for her oldest brother, or Jon, or Theon. They always joked that you could tell a personality of a girl by who she fancied; sensible and dependable Robb, romantically emo Jon, or drugged-out sexy Theon.

Even Bran, she supposed, who tended towards the artistic and elegant, though even when they were younger they knew that he and Jojen were destined to be more than just best friends.

But Rickon?

The last time she saw him, at Fresher’s Week, he’d been drunk and grinning, his hair a mess, towering above everyone else. Six foot something, and broad in the shoulder (like Robb, her brain reminded her), and naturally tanned from working outside with his uncle for the summer. Scruffy, and yes, a bit wild, with blue eyes and a white-toothed grin, and…

_**WildWolf** : i fancied u since i was thirteen but i was just aryas little bro and u were grown up and cool and i was trouble :( like crazy shit in my head cos of dads death and mum bein so angry and numb about it and like forgettin i was around half the time. dont mean 2 make u sorry 4 me btw. just sayin why i was so angry all the time at everythin. but u were amazin and clever and u talked 2 me about shit like your mum and made me think itd be okay in the end and i asked benjen 2 try and get me some help when i was fifteen 2 sort my head out bcos you showed me itd be okay and i could be okay._

_**WildWolf** : and ur beautiful_

_**WildWolf** : nice and clever and pretty and funny and i really like u a lot_

_**WildWolf** : not just bcos u were nice 2 me when i was a kid cos that sounds really fucked up_

_**WildWolf** : bcos ive never met anyone like u before in my life ever. arya told me 2 tell u so if u dont like me like that i can move on. like with therapy. just got 2 know if u do_

_**StagPrincess** : Rickon. This is really sudden._

_**WildWolf** : Im sorry_

_**StagPrincess** : No, don’t be. At all. Just that you’ve always been Arya’s little brother, and it’s quite difficult to think of you as someone else._

_**WildWolf** : okay i understand_

_**StagPrincess** : I’m not turning you down, I’m just saying that it’ll be a leap for my mind to make. I remember you when you were ten, and covered in mud, and talking about wanting to be in the Army, and a vet, and an outdoors survival specialist. I remember hugging you when you were upset over your father, and promising to get you some of that chocolate you really loved because your mother didn’t let you go into town by yourself because you’d punched a shopkeeper for accusing you of shoplifting. It’s quite a big thing, realising that someone is now an adult, when you remember them as a child._

_**StagPrincess** : Perhaps we should go and have a drink as friends, and get to know each other before we think about if we are compatible? That would be the sensible way of doing things._

It was all so sudden that she didn’t really articulate herself well. Rickon was handsome, and obviously intelligent, and interesting. He always was, which was why Shireen spent time with him when they were younger; it started as feeling sorry for the boy, and then actually enjoying time with him. To have him fancy her though? That was something that she’d never even considered, because, to be perfectly honest, when surrounded by her female friends, no one tended to notice her. Being the fascination of a boy for so long, and how he talked about her-?

She jumped as someone knocked on the door. Frowning, Shireen padded over, peered through the little glass peephole; no one there. Curiosity drove her to unlocking, opening, and…

Rickon looked up from his place curled on the grubby carpet, all legs and untidy hair and tanned cheeks, phone with the messenger app open in his hand.

“How long have you been sitting there?”  
  
“Uh. About since nine? Was trying to think of how to start talking to you.”  
  
Shireen sighed, offered her hand, pulled him to his feet.

“Arya said it’d be romantic, let me guess?”  
  
His sheepish look belied the wolf inside.


End file.
